Three Men and a Bounty (9 page)

No other word came to mind to describe the marshal except magnificent. Unclothed, his broad chest looked like a powerful mahogany wall covered in skin that Chris wanted to lick.

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He followed the path of muscles tapering down to a slim waist and farther down where James’ lean, impressively muscled legs seemed to stretch out in front of him with no end.

“Get your fill?”

“Not by far.” He looked James in the eyes. “You’re beautiful.”

James frowned. “Don’t reckon I’ve ever been called that before.”

“You are.”

“Take off your britches, young’un. I want to see the rest of you and how beautiful
you
are.”

“Ch–Chris. Call me Chris.”

James grinned. “Take off your britches…Chris.”

He reached for the buttons on his pants without taking his gaze off of James. Chris pleasured himself looking at James’ chiseled stomach muscles. His gaze just barely glanced over the brown cock jutting toward the ceiling, but not so fast that he didn’t notice the pearl of liquid gathered at the slit.

His hands itched to touch the hard shaft. His mouth watered with wanting to lick the ridges leading up to the smooth head and that tempting liquid. He wanted to adore James the way a man like him deserved to be adored.

Chris lifted his gaze from James’ lap to find the marshal watching him intently.

James smiled and reached for his cock, moaning and smearing the liquid around the head of it with his thumb as if to spruce up his already appealing member.

“Come here, Chris.”

Naked and on his knees, he went to James as ordered.

On his knees now, too, James bracketed Chris’ face with both hands to draw him closer. He bent his head in what was becoming a more and more familiar act of possession than Chris could have ever imagined.

He wanted to be possessed by James in every way and had his wish when James’ fingers tightened slightly in his hair. James urged
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Chris’ head back, forcing him to arch his neck before he kissed and sucked the spot right over Chris’ pulse-point and sent tremors rushing throughout his body.

Chris shuddered in James’ embrace, drawing his own arms up around James’ back as James tumbled him down onto the mattress on his back again.

“I want you so much it hurts.”

“Hurts me, too.”
Hurt me so good, James. Please.

James put his mouth on Chris’, thrusting his tongue in like he owned Chris, every part of him. His hands roamed as he took his fill of Chris’ mouth, smoothing over Chris’ chest down to his cock. He gently squeezed Chris’ full-to-bursting balls as if testing Chris’

stamina.

Chris whimpered when James dragged his mouth from Chris’ to latch on to a nipple. He licked and sucked until Chris writhed beneath him. Chris wrapped his arms around James and clutched so tight he thought he might squeeze the life out of him.

James showed no signs of slowing down or dying out, though.

Instead, he intensified his efforts. He broke from Chris’ hold and kissed a path down to Chris’ penis standing at full mast.

James paused, then took the organ with his tongue the same way he had taken Chris’ mouth—with authority and passion.

Chris bucked his hips, his entire lower body feeling like it was on fire. “Please, James…”

James answered the plea by sliding a hand down to Chris’ bottom before he slipped a finger into Chris’ anus and slowly turned it.

Chris bore down on the digit, wriggling to impale himself farther as James added another finger and pushed passed the first ring of muscles to delve deeper. He bit his bottom lip to keep from crying out. He moaned instead at the sweet invasion, eyes fluttering and rolling up into his head at the burning sensation of being partly filled.

“More. I can take more. Please…” He hadn’t begged anyone to take him before, always just praying that the man or woman he had
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sex with wouldn’t hurt him out of spite, always afraid of being rejected for being himself.

He didn’t think James would spurn him like the others had. Chris hoped he wouldn’t. He prayed. He didn’t think he could take seeing the disgust in James’ eyes that he had seen in the eyes of those ‘hands who had tried to brand him. James pushed the self-pitying thoughts out of Chris’ mind when he curved his fingers and pressed against something inside Chris that made him scream.

James slapped his free hand over Chris’ mouth just as another howl rose up from outside as if in commiseration.

“Think you can keep it down a mite?” James asked, but there was no censure in his voice, just a touch of amusement. Chris nodded, and when James took his hand away, he gasped at the climax that continued to crash through him in rippling swells.

“What did you do to me?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Chris watched as James lathered his cock with soap and water from the basin on the nightstand, heartbeat speeding when he realized what James set to do. Now that the moment had arrived, and as desperately as he wanted James, he wasn’t sure he was ready.

“Don’t vex yourself. I’ll be as gentle as I can be. Trust me?”

Chris wordlessly nodded as James planted his palms on the mattress on either side of him and hooked Chris’ knees over each well-muscled arm.

James lifted Chris and spread his legs enough to accommodate his width. “Relax yourself now and take a deep breath.” He nudged Chris’ back hole with the head of his penis, pushing past the first ring of muscles the way he had with his fingers, but this time the anticipation of being penetrated proved stronger, the burning sensation more intense.

Chris had never had anyone as big as James. He’d never wanted anyone as much neither.

“You okay?”

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Chris nodded again and took a deep breath as he’d been instructed to.

James leaned in and brushed his lips over Chris’, tracing Chris’

mouth with his tongue before he thrust past the final ring of inner muscles barring his entry.

Chris gasped, and James swallowed the sound with an eating kiss that stole more of Chris’ breath away before James circled his hips and thrust again.

“Oh, God…James!” Chris clutched James’ shoulders just short of digging in his nails. He moved his hips to take James deeper.

James buried Chris’ cries beneath another hard, lingering kiss.

This time, however, he didn’t take his mouth away as he drove into Chris. He sank deep before pulling back and sinking in once more until he touched that spot inside Chris again.

Chris pushed his tongue out to meet James’, for the first time acting the aggressor as another climax overwhelmed him. His spirits spurted onto his stomach as James continued to pound above him until he gained his own release in a quaking explosion.

Slick with perspiration and panting, James rested his forehead against Chris’ for a long moment before pulling back to stare at him.

“Still okay?”

“More than okay,” Chris whispered and kissed James.

Outside, the wolf bayed.

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“What in tarnation happened to you?”

Troy brushed by Josie on the staircase leading to the upstairs rooms without speaking. He should have known he couldn’t get away with such impoliteness, but he hadn’t anticipated bumping into anyone this late in the evening, not even the ever-vigilant Josie.

“You heard me, mister.” She caught him by the bicep and jerked him back around to face her. “What happened to you?”

Troy didn’t know what to tell her. He knew he couldn’t tell her the truth and wasn’t sure what else she would believe.

That he had stumbled into another wolf’s territory in the woods and decided to stand his ground rather than retreat and play it safe like he usually did with wild animals didn’t sound believable despite its truth.

How much of her woman’s intuition would accept the truth or think he was making up crazy tall tales?

“Is that blood?”

Josie pointed to a spot on his chin, and he remembered how he’d fought for his life, defended himself against the other wolf’s vicious attack. He remembered how he’d bitten into the lone wolf who’d had the misfortune of challenging him. He remembered how they’d clawed and snarled at each other as savagely as a person wielding a meat axe.

It had been the first time he’d fought with another animal while in his wolf form. He’d always tried to avoid confrontations, one, for fear that he’d never survive a scrape with a truly wild animal and not just a shifter, and, two, for fear of being discovered by one of the Indian
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tribes. That he’d survived this long without detection proved a testament to his caution and skill. He knew also that luck had been on his side.

Before tonight, he’d never wondered if there were others like him.

Now he did. The Indians even had a designation for people like him, so surely, he wasn’t the only
skinwalker—
couldn’t be. There must be others—somewhere.

“It’s not my blood.”

“What’s the other feller looking like?”

“He’s a little the worse for wear.”

“Don’t say.”

“It’s not serious.”

“Did you catch up with that young’un of yours?”

Troy peered at her as she dropped her hand from his arm with the change of subject. “He’s not my young’un.”

“You want him to be, don’t you?”

“What I want and what’s reality are two different things.”

Josie frowned and put a hand on her hip. “Well, what bee got in your bonnet since you left here?”

Troy pressed a thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose and squeezed, suddenly overcome with a bone-deep weariness he hadn’t even seen coming.

He could still smell them, could smell their lovemaking despite the blood that still filled his senses from the fight.

Oh, how he had wanted to be a part of it, how it had pained him to be on the outside of that house and know what was going on inside without any recourse except to howl his outrage at the moon.

It wasn’t like he could go up to the door, knock, and ask for the marshal and his guest. He didn’t have a reason like Chris had. He certainly didn’t have the gumption of the kid.

Where had it gone? He’d been as fearless once when he hadn’t had anything to lose, when he’d been desperate for acceptance and love.

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He remembered how he’d wanted to thank Josiah for his kindness the same way Chris wanted to thank James—right and proper. He remembered how Josiah had gently but firmly turned him down, too.

“I’m powerful flattered, boy, but I’m an old coot, too old for you.

Maybe twenty years ago…Besides, there are rules against what
you’re offering. Much as I want to, I cain’t, boy. I just cain’t…”

Now he owned a successful saloon and led the life of a law-abiding citizen. He’d settled down and couldn’t remember what it was like to yearn for somebody so much it turned him inside out the way Josiah had. He couldn’t remember what it had been like to be out on the road for weeks and months at a time, tracking a quarry—that is when he wasn’t quarry himself—with no one to answer to
but
himself. Back then, he hadn’t cared about or valued anything or anyone more complex than his next bounty or his next meal, so he hadn’t feared losing anything.

He did now. He feared losing everything he had amassed during and because of his cavalier days. He cared about losing something he hadn’t even gained yet, but it was something he wanted almost as much as he wanted to go back and change what had happened to his father.

“Troy, tell me what’s wrong.” Josie put a gentle hand on his arm and waited.

“There’s nothing wrong.” He patted Josie’s hand and gently removed it from his arm before heading for his room. He hoped she took his cue and didn’t follow.

When he made it to his room unharassed, Troy closed and locked the door, just to be on the safe side. Fully dressed, he collapsed on the bed and unwillingly revisited his discussion with Josie.

There was nothing wrong at all except that he was having second thoughts about his life and his place in the world.

For most of his existence since his parents’ deaths, all he’d wanted was a place to belong, a place where no one judged him or
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looked at him as if he were a menace or a pervert. He’d thought he found this at Wolf Creek, but now he wondered.

What would happen to everything he’d built if he got involved with Chris or James or both? And who was to say that either man would willingly risk their own standing to be with him? Would either of them think the risk they took to be with each other worth the same risk it took to be with him?

He supposed he wouldn’t know anything unless he outright asked them. The worse that could happen was either man would say no.

What if they didn’t? Could he be with them without being honest about his beast? Would his beast allow him to have a normal relationship without letting its existence be known?

It hadn’t so far, but then he had never been involved with anyone beyond the time it took him to find his release. He had never been in a relationship beyond the superficial. He had never found anyone that made him think about forever. The thought of revealing himself to two men he wasn’t about to kill, but two men that he wanted to make love to instead, sent a shiver of pure terror through him that he had never imagined before.

He’d thought he’d experienced the most paralyzing fear of his life when he’d had to confront Jack with his desire to leave the gang more than a decade ago. He’d done everything he could not to reveal his animal. Jack, however, had forced his hand. To this day, he remembered the look of shock on the older man’s face, the look of horror when Troy had finally shifted and stood before Jack, growling and baring his long canines. Jack let him leave. He’d had no choice, but he hadn’t allowed Troy’s defection without a fight. Troy bore the bullet wounds to prove it.