Roped In

3

SHANE RETRIEVED the note from his pocket shortly after Candace had gone back to the dance floor, and after he read it, he couldn’t believe it.

Meet Nicki at the Wade house?

Nicki?

After their argument, he wasn’t sure what to think.

Then he remembered how she’d looked at him at first, just as any woman looked at a man. And that costume she was wearing…

Nicki really had grown up.

Had her anger with him only been a prelude to more? He’d known women like that in the past—ones who liked to argue as foreplay.

Maybe Nicki was the same. He had a note right here in his hand to suggest it.

He glanced at his old watch. Twenty minutes till ten, the meeting hour.

Hell, if a woman wanted him to come over, he wasn’t about to say no. First of all, there’d been an undeniable attraction between them from the start, setting off sparks as they’d talked to each other, angry or not. Besides that, he was used to cleansing his mind with sex, and Lord knew he needed to forget about everything that’d been waiting here for him in Pine Junction on the Slanted C.

In the end, an invitation was an invitation, right? Even if it was from the girl next door.

It just went to show that nothing ever stayed the same, so who was he to deny her?

Blanking his mind to any mental arguments, he left the hotel and walked to Main Street, where he’d parked his Dodge truck. The gas lamps lent a timeless atmosphere to the night, along with the Old West facades of Pine Junction—some of which had been used as Hollywood sets, back in the day. Planked sidewalks, saloons and rising hills that led to an abandoned silver mine gave him reason to get in the mood for this outlaw-meets-saloon-girl date.

All the while, he kept thinking of Nicki in that costume, Nicki heating him from boot to hat with just a long look when she first saw him…

Nicki’s surprising invitation.

As he drove to the W+W, the faint moonlight painted the white fences along the dirt road that led to the ranch. When he got there, he parked near a copse of pine trees, far out of the open.

Before leaving the truck, he checked his cell phone. A few minutes to ten. She had to be waiting.

All he kept seeing was Nicki Wade’s light green eyes and how they’d heated him up with the fire in them.

But then his conscience came rushing back. Nicki’s dad, who’d been downright friendly and courteous to Shane when a whole lot of people in Pine Junction hadn’t been, might not have appreciated this. There’d been too many older, well-played daughters around the area for Shane to have been the father favorite. Nicki had been so young that there was no doubt her dad had felt secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be dealing with Shane in that way for a good, long while, if ever.

But Nicki was able to make her own decisions now, and she had asked him over.

Another look at the time told Shane that it was ten o’clock on the nose.

He got out of the truck, took care with closing the door, then walked the rest of the way to the house, where the entrance had been left unlocked.

Opening it, he crossed the threshold, into a hallway just off a well-used parlor where the Wades used to greet their guests. He’d been in the room, with its tarnished crystal lamps and old velvet sofas, only a few times, during neighborly parties when he’d been a kid, eager to leave and run around outside where his parents and big brother couldn’t keep an eye on him. Nicki had been much the same—fidgety while the adults had sat around and talked, her ill-fitting dresses always askew before the first hour was up, even though she hadn’t been doing much. Just sitting on a couch had seemed to be enough to put her in a state of dishabille.

She’d been cute, he recalled, but she’d been a sweet kind of cute. The kind that went against the nature of the bachelor he’d eventually become—one who’d seen how miserable his mother had been during marriage and decided that it wasn’t for him.

Second floor, she had written.

He quietly mounted the stairs, freezing every time a creak sounded under his feet. His pulse thumped, competing with the grandfather clock in the parlor. Both sounds seemed to flood the house.

When he’d finished with the steps, he moved toward the only room that had its door closed, then rested his hand on the old-fashioned crystal knob, turning it.

Inside, the darkness was cut only by a sliver of moonlight from the gaping curtains. It was enough to show him the lower half of the bed, where his saloon girl rested. She lay facedown, her dress gathered near her hips in a bunch of satin, her long legs still encased in the fishnet pattern of her stockings.

He heard breathing, even and soft.

Nicki—she hadn’t been kidding with that note.

Waiting for my outlaw to break out of his cell and be with me, his woman, the saloon girl with the fishnet stockings and garters…

But had she already fallen asleep?

Well, yeah. That’d make sense with the scenario in the note. The outlaw coming back to his hideaway and finding the saloon girl in his bed, waiting for him.

Someone who’d allow him a little escapade, just for a night, he reminded himself.

He pulled up the bandanna over the lower half of his face and moved to the bed. He heard her sigh, then shift restlessly in a rustle of that maddeningly alluring dress.

Yup, he was a bad, bad man on the run from the law, and he was going to show this woman just how dangerous meeting with him could be.

He went to the foot of the mattress, rested his hands on her stocking-covered ankles. Warm under the silk. Delicate.

Easing his hands higher, he coasted his thumbs over her calves.

She sighed again, wiggling her hips.

Lust, pure and simple, bolted through Shane, making his cock hard, and he moved his hands higher, over the backs of her knees, over her thighs, where her stockings ended and garters began.

He heard her breathing hitch, and he knew the game was really on now.

And if this was how Nicki wanted it, he was ready to play it.

“Don’t make a sound,” the outlaw whispered, reaching under her dress. “Not a word…”

IN THE HAZE OF A DREAM—the aftermath of the fantasy she’d had before drifting off to sleep, one that seemed incredibly real—Nicki felt the outlaw’s hands on her rear end, cupping her.

Don’t make a sound. And she didn’t as her face rubbed against the bedcovers, her hands pressed against the mattress. Her breasts were flattened beneath her, making them feel swollen, raw against the quilting.

In that foggy dream, she felt the bed dip as the bandit climbed onto it, heard the box springs creak. His legs brushed the outside of hers as he straddled her.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he said in a deep Western drawl, a whisper above the stillness of the night.

She moaned in answer.

He slipped his hands—big, work-roughened hands—from her butt to her hips, then…

Oh, then underneath, to her belly.

Her muscles there jumped, and the tiny flinches made her gasp. Desire nipped at her skin, and she felt plumped, aching, slippery. Ready already.

He spoke again, rough and ready, too. “You knew this is the only place I can hide out. You waited for me.”

A hunted man, she thought. A fugitive from the law.

Dangerous.

And he sounded just like Shane.

That revved her up even more in her dream-state, and she lifted her hips, knowing he was tender and gentle underneath his dangerous exterior. Her fantasy man took that as a sign to go on, coaxing his hands into her undies.

She muffled her moan.

He laughed, low and lethal, easing a finger between her slick folds, urging her legs apart. Down, up, circling her clit, taking up where they’d left off before. Her hips moved with his strokes, especially when he used his other hand to pull her back to him, nestling her rear end against him.

Her fantasy man was hard. She could feel the ridge of him even through his pants and the cotton of her undies.

Panting, she felt her breath, moist and hot, against the covers. She was still in a fever dream, a million miles away from the Nicki she’d always known.

Grinding back against him, she made him moan, too, his hands grasping her hips as he encouraged her to go on, harder. Slower.

The feel of him…Even in a dream, the primal need hit her hard. Damn it, she wanted him inside her without anything between them.

He coasted his finger up and into her, just like earlier, when she’d touched herself and exploded by just thinking about him. But this time it was better, more intense.

He swept his finger around while using his palm to press against her clit. She couldn’t do anything but make little helpless sounds, couldn’t even find her voice so she could tell him that this wasn’t enough. She wanted it all.

She rocked against him, every cell in her body palpitating, stomping in an all-consuming rhythm that beat on her damp skin, in her ears, in her temples. There was a pressure in her that she’d never felt before—a rising joy that she rode up and up.

“There,” he said on a near growl. He churned his erection against her, echoing the sinuous movement with his hand on her sex…in her sex. “You like it bad, don’t you?”

Yes, she did.

She was getting so high that she didn’t think she could go any further, her body tight, ready to fly open. And, when he snuck his other hand to her clit again, working it until she couldn’t stand another second, she broke.

Bursting apart, pieces of her all around, in the air, tumbling, trying to find a place to fit together again during this freefall.

Showering like rain.

A storm.

A banging, breath-stealing push of shudders as she fell back to the bed, crying out against the mattress as he covered her mouth with his hand.

As Nicki sucked in breath upon breath against his skin, she opened her eyes part way, still in the dream.

But…

She blinked.

Calluses on his hand. The taste of skin—musky, male.

The hint of her juices on him, too.

The voice of the outlaw again. “You don’t know what kind of danger you’ve put yourself in, waiting here for me.”

The voice…this voice.

Shane’s.

She blinked. Held her breath as reality rushed her.

Real. This was actually happening.

Her heart blipped like a series of beeps counting down to a gasp that wouldn’t come. It was so dark that she couldn’t see much else but the cut of moonlight slashing across the foot of her bed.

His whispers seemed to weave themselves into the surreal, carnal shadows.

“Not a word,” he said, tracing her mouth with a finger, clearly intending to continue what he’d started.

Lust fireworked through her. Had he wanted her so much at the party that he’d come here, just like the bad boy he’d always been?

Had that look he’d first given her from across the room said everything?

Heart exploding, she turned around to him, and even in the near darkness, she found him with a bandanna over the lower half of his face. With her free hand, she tugged it down. Her pulse kicked in her ears, her blood going through her so fast that it felt like lightning.

“Shane?” she whispered, although she couldn’t see much of his face.

He froze for some reason.

She didn’t move, either. She wasn’t sure why—maybe because this had started out as a dream. She’d been half-asleep, but at some point, she’d been awake.

So, so awake.

Dreaming had only been an excuse for her to throw herself into her biggest desire, and it was just now enveloping her with that reality.

Even so, her pulse chugged along, propelled by the possibility that he had wanted this as much as she had.

But when he spoke, he blasted her world apart.

“Who else would it be but me?” he asked.

For a second, she followed the echo of his question, the reverberations chipping away at her.

Nicki grabbed her blankets to cover herself and snapped on a bedside light.

And there he sat, the outlaw Shane, shock registering on his face, too, as he saw that this wasn’t the welcome he’d been expecting.

IT TOOK SHANE A FEW seconds to come to terms with what was happening.

Why did she seem so flabbergasted?

But there she was, huddled under the bedcovers, her hair a tumble of falling curls and one lone feather that had stayed in during all the excitement. The few others were spread over the bed, like the aftermath of some crash.

The flush of her cheeks made the green of her eyes stand out in surprised fervor.

But why was she reacting like this if she’d invited him over?

Shane got up off the bed, thankful that his untucked shirt covered all evidence of his arousal. Not that she wouldn’t know his state, but…

Ah, crap.

“The note…” He lowered his voice. “You wrote me a note.”

“What?”

Now he was really confused. He dug into his jeans pocket where he’d stored the paper, then offered it to her.

She read it, her brow furrowed. She looked adorable, even if she was likely to murder him any moment.

His body was still pounding from everything that’d just gone on in that bed.

Nicki Wade. She’d been dressed as a saloon girl, as if it was a comfortable thing for her, but then again, outside of costumes, he’d never thought that Nicki would be so…

He couldn’t come up with a word that described what she’d conjured up in him. All he knew was that he’d wanted her more than anything now. She was perfect—her scent, like fresh summer grass; her smooth skin; the way she’d fit in his hands; the gasps and moans that had reached right into him, twisting and turning until he was so wound up that it hurt to stand here staring at her.

It felt as if she’d always been here, waiting.

“What the hell is this?” she finally said in her own edged whisper as she held that note.

Either Nicki was playing the innocent or she was truly flummoxed. He was going to go with the latter.

“Candace,” he said, thinking that he should’ve known better. “She must’ve been setting us up. She wrote that note and put it in my pocket.”

Nicki was already out of the bed, the covers wrapped around her, even though she still had most of her clothing on. She picked up a TV remote from her nightstand.

“Nic—” he started to say.

She threw it at him and he dodged. At the same time, he scooped his hat off the floor.

“Can we be civilized about this?” he asked.

“Civilized?” Even their harsh whispers seemed to rock the house. “This is beyond civil.”

She searched her nightstand for something else to throw, and he darted over to her before she could destroy her entire room.

He’d clasped one of her wrists in his hand, and he could swear that his skin against hers set them both to sizzling.

His cock gave an agonizing thud, so he let go of her and she backed away, as if rocked hard, too.

“I understand why you’re upset.”

“Just what do you think I am, for you to come over here and…?”

He offered a grin—one that usually got him out of scrapes—and shrugged.

Cheeks flushing even more, she tightened the covers around her, but that only served to push up her breasts. Every move she made echoed in his groin, which was still pounding, killing him.

Nicki made a “come on” gesture with her fingers, so he prepared to explain it all.

“When a woman invites a man in,” he said, “it’s hard for him to say no. I took the note at face value.”

“But I didn’t invite you here.”

“By God, Nicki, I’m sorry.”

Her chest kept heaving, her skin going redder.

Then it hit him. Nicki hadn’t exactly kicked him out of bed right away, even though she hadn’t been expecting a man to sneak up on her in costume. In fact, it’d been quite a spell before she’d come out of the whole scenario.

“Nicki,” he said softly, “even if you didn’t write that note, did you want me to come here?”

She made as if she were going to grab the pillow from the bed and throw it at him, but then she stopped and plopped down on the mattress.

He’d hit a target, and it was as if the bull’s-eye was ringing in him, too.

“Listen,” he said, “if you’d told me at any time to get out, I would’ve.”

“I was half-asleep when it all started.”

That made him feel even worse, and she must’ve seen it in the way he wiped a hand over his face.

“Nicki…”

“No.” She sighed. “Jeez, I actually believe you when you say that being here was a mistake.”

The way she said “mistake”…

Tentatively, he came nearer to the bed. “When I found you sleeping, I thought it was a part of the act suggested in that note.”

When she looked up at him with those big green eyes, his heart almost broke. There was something he couldn’t figure out, almost as if he was hurting her by explaining everything.

Nicki gestured toward the door again, as if trying to avoid the same questions he was struggling with. “The door’s waiting for you.”

Dismissed, just as so many others had done to him, the rascal of the county.

Her gesture got him straight through the heart. He almost held his hand up to it, because it was as if she hadn’t needed to put that hole in him before seeing through him.

Silence wedged between them as he kept right on aching. And it wasn’t just in his nethers, either. He was dying to touch her hair. Dying to see what she would do if he just reached out to her, stroking a finger over her cheek, her collarbone.

Damned hormones. Damned blood still pounding through him, driving him to distraction and agony.

“Will you tell me one thing?” he asked, unable to help himself.

“Depends on the question.”

“How much of a dream was it?”

She pulled those covers around her even tighter.

“Nicki?” he asked softly.

During her hesitation, he found his answer: at some point, even if she’d been sleeping when he’d come in, she’d known what was going on—that it’d been real.

And she’d let it continue.

She stood from the bed. “You really should go.”

An inexplicable urge captured him—a draw that he’d never encountered before. Was it because she was the one woman who didn’t seem to want him?

All his life, he’d chased and chased, even while running from Pine Junction. Chasing had been the one thing that had occupied him, entertained him.

But this wasn’t a mere game. Nicki had been a good girl, and he always drew the line at those, because good girls were trouble.

So why was he still here?

“That outlaw thing did something for you,” he said.

From the way she whipped her gaze over to him, he knew that his aim had been true.

“You don’t need to worry about it,” she said, “because it’s never going to happen again.”

“You sure about that?” Shane asked. “Because I’d venture to say that you were pretty enthusiastic this time.”

Nicki stared at him, her gaze wide.

“What other fantasies do you have, Nicki?” he asked, just daring her to tell him.

NICKI HELD HER BREATH.

Other fantasies.

She thought of her favorites—vampires in moody foreign castles, storm-tossed shipwreck islands and faraway desert tents. All fake, all so appealing, anyway.

She wouldn’t dare confess any of it, though.

But looking at Shane now, with his chiseled features, deep blue eyes and imposing frame garbed in black, she longed for…more. She yearned to be taken to another world, to have his hands and mouth all over her, as if she were the only person who drove him to the intensity she’d experienced in him tonight.

“That’s none of your business,” she said.

Nicki didn’t have the heart to utter the rest: Were you here for just the sex or because you thought you’d be having sex with me…?

As he stood there, he looked just as needful as she felt, his gaze a little hazy as he kept watching her.

Her pulse jerked, and she loosened her grip on the covers.

It was as if she was in that outlaw dream/fantasy again—a place where she’d had no responsibility, where she wasn’t the Nicki who had so much going on in reality.

But she’d been nothing more than a mistake tonight, and even if he wanted to talk about fantasies now, she wouldn’t give in.

Nicki pointed toward her door.

He paused, and she wondered what was going through his mind, especially since he seemed…

Was “rejected” the right word?

He—Shane Carter—the one all the women had gathered round tonight at the party?

Before she could absorb that, he fixed his hat back on his head, nodding to her. When he grinned, it was as if he was trying to show that it didn’t matter, but it struck her as wrong.

“Again,” he said, “sorry about the trouble.” He paused. “And, if it makes any difference, I’m glad it happened. Real glad.”

Glad?

With that piece of news, she watched him go through her door, then shut it behind him. Her pulse fluttered like a dying thing as she sat on her bed, her brain finally catching up to everything that’d just happened.

Shane Carter, asking her about her fantasies, seeming as if he would make more than a few of them come true for her.

Shane Carter, glad that he’d been fooled into being here, in this bed…

Downstairs, she thought she heard the door close.

As her skin kept tingling, Nicki lay down on the mattress. And, even though she knew he’d gone, she kept listening for any footfalls outside her door, wishing she would hear the outlaw coming to his hideaway just one more time before the sun rose.

4

What other fantasies do you have…?

After a round of chores the next morning, Nicki sat on the back porch swing near the kitchen exit, fixing the seam on a Halloween princess costume for one of the ranch kids.

She couldn’t forget what Shane had said to her.

What he’d done to her.

She blew out a breath as a zing of remembrance flew through her, playing electric havoc in her belly, then tingling lower. Just the thought of him made her shift a little on the swing, sending it to creaking.

It was an addiction, running last night over and over again in her mind, reconstructing what it’d been like to feel his mouth near her neck, his hot breath in her ear.

Not a word…

The porch screen door slammed open and three kids spilled out, giggling and waving at Nicki as they ran past, rousing a couple of Australian shepherd ranch dogs who’d been poking around an old oak tree.

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