Chapter Six
Gray slept for most of the night but awoke slightly before the sun came up. The sun was starting to rise over the mountains next to them, and the warmth from the fire had died down and was now a pile of coals.
Aaron slept soundly, seemingly undisturbed by his surroundings at all. His facial features were less controlled, making him look even younger. He kept his hat on as he slept, and he never took off his jacket, even when the sun was blazing hot. It struck Gray as odd that the kid would do that.
The longer he spent with Aaron, the more convinced he became that the kid wouldn’t shoot him, even with all his bravado. If given a clear opportunity, the kid’s conscience would probably prevent him from following through. Aaron hadn’t drawn his gun when Gray was in the river and didn’t threaten him when he was getting out. He’d taken the bait and asked Gray about his innocence, which meant the kid did care, despite the proclamations that he didn”t.
Gray suspected the kid didn’t want to turn him in if he wasn’t sure whether Luke was guilty or not. Aaron had to know that turning them in would mean certain death for both brothers. Maybe it would be in their best interest, though, to turn themselves in. His gut told him it was Casey who put the bounty on his head. Aaron had a direct link to Casey through this bounty. Maybe Gray could bring an end to all of this if he met face-to-face with him. But he didn’t want to go in as a prisoner, he didn’t want to go alone, and he didn’t want Casey to have the upper hand.
Which meant he needed to turn the tables on the kid.
Get free, and make Aaron take him to Casey—not as a prisoner, but as a free man. So he would have the upper hand instead.
He pulled the knife he had hidden away and cut the bindings that held him. He spared another look at Aaron again before making his next move, but the kid was still sleeping peacefully.
He was going to have to use the ropes on the kid since he didn’t have anything else to work with. He quietly got up and made his way toward Aaron, careful not to make any noise or cast any shadows on the kid as he walked.
When he was close enough, he quickly jumped onto the sleeping boy, straddled his hips with his own, and grabbed the kid’s arms before he could reach for a weapon.
The kid awoke with a start and bucked wildly while screaming curses at Gray to get off. But Gray’s grip was too strong, and he easily overpowered the kid, making it impossible for him to move.
Gray wasn’t surprised by how easy it was to hold him down. While the kid was deceptively strong, he was still young. Gray sat on top of him, his knees on either side of the boy’s hips, his hands pinning down the kid’s arms. The kid tried desperately to throw him off and yelled obscenities at him, but Gray held him down with ease.
“Stop struggling. You know it’s pointless,” Gray said. To his surprise, Aaron stopped bucking and glared at him, hatred burning in his green eyes.
“When I get free, I’m going to blow your head off!” Aaron grit out.
Gray jerked his head back from being shouted at in such close proximity.
Aaron growled at him. “Just let me go and we will call it even. I won’t come after you, and you just let me leave.”
“Right. Like I can trust that you’ll actually leave me alone. Especially after you just threatened to blow my head off two seconds ago.”
Gray took the rope and tied the kid’s hands up in front of his body, almost as swiftly as Aaron had done to him earlier.
He got off the kid, who continued to give him a death glare but stayed frozen on the ground.
“What are you going to do now, leave me?” Aaron spat at him.
Gray yanked him up off the ground by his arms, and Aaron yelped out of fear or pain, it wasn’t clear which. He backed Aaron up against a tree and held him there. “You’re in luck, because that’s the plan. Just have to make sure you don’t have any weapons to chase me down with. Bozeman is only about a day or two’s walk north. You’ll be fine.”
He reached toward Aaron to search for weapons. The last thing he needed was a bullet in the back if he was wrong and the kid decided to shoot him. He wasn’t willing to take that chance.
“Don’t touch me!” Aaron snapped. He used his body weight to slam his shoulder into Gray, knocking him back and taking him by surprise. Aaron used the moment of confusion to try to make a run for it, bolting for the horses.
For a second, Gray thought about letting him get on his horse and go, but he didn’t want to risk the kid coming back for him and his brother. He needed Aaron to be on foot, so he could put more distance between them.
He bolted off after the kid and tackled him from behind. They both took a spill onto the ground, face first. Gray braced his weight away from the kid to make sure he didn’t crush the young boy. He grabbed Aaron by the arm and roughly turned him over.
As he turned, the kid’s hat flew off his head. Gray went completely still as long, brown hair spilled out across Aaron’s shoulders and face.
The kid tried to use his bound hands to beat Gray back. Gray caught the small hands and pinned them above his head. Or her head.
Aaron was a woman!
Even as Gray stared with proof right in front of him, he couldn’t believe it. But then it all started to come together in his mind. Aaron didn’t have the soft face of a boy who hadn’t hit puberty yet, but the face of a woman, with beautiful green eyes and long brown hair. Gray was taken aback by how beautiful she was, even as she was still bucking wildly under him. All too aware of the fact that she was a woman now, he felt himself getting hard as a rush of desire flooded through him.
“Get off me!” she yelled.
He could see the fear in her eyes now that she was aware her hat had fallen off in the tumble. She must’ve needed to hide her identity as a woman for safety. A woman in the West by herself was a target, but a kid was off limits, even for most criminals.
“So you can run again? Not likely. If you insist on trying to get away, then this is how it’s going to be.”
Gray held both of her hands with one of his, still keeping them above her head. He ran his hand along her hips, and she tried to headbutt him. He barely jerked his head back in time, narrowly missing a knock to the face.
“I’m not going to hurt you. Calm down, Red! I just have to make sure you don’t have any weapons on you. As you did to me!” he reminded her.
Her body stiffened under his, making it possible for him to search her, even though he knew she had to be unwilling.
She knew she had no choice. He was too strong for her. She breathed rapidly, and her chest rose and fell quickly. A chest that she kept covered up with her vest. That was why she never took it off.
“Fine,” she spat. “Be quick about it. And if you try anything, I’ll kill you.”
He expected to see anger, but as her eyes met his, they were filled with fear and apprehension. She was vulnerable in this position, and he had a feeling that was not something she was used to.
She was very attractive, and he wasn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed that she was a woman before. Her hair framed her face perfectly, cascading around her shoulders like a waterfall. Her lips looked entirely too soft and kissable, and they enticed him to lean down and kiss her. But he resisted the urge.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less, Red.”
Now that she wasn’t fighting him any longer, he began his search.
He ran his arms across her back, and he felt a shiver that went through her at his touch. He felt himself getting harder in response. Was it a shiver of fear, or of desire?
He loved the feeling of a woman’s body in his hands. Soft and giving. Reminding himself that she was not a willing woman, he kept his search as swift as he could.
He pulled out a knife that she had tucked away in the front waistband of her pants and smiled. Good thing he’d tied her hands before she could use it. He also pulled out a knife from her boot, and another from the belt of her pants. She had several weapons on her and every place he thought to search, one more popped up.
A twinge of admiration went through him. She was smart to have more than one weapon on her, and he could see how she had made it so long as a bounty hunter. Her intelligence had carried her through where brute force couldn’t. She wasn’t a gentlewoman, surrounded by an overprotective mother and father like the women he was used to dealing with. She was brave, bold, and resilient.
Her breath caught when he moved his hands to the inside of her thighs, a small gasp that she wasn’t able to keep to herself. His eyes snapped to hers and the air around him seemed to still. He almost groaned. In this position, he knew she was nervous. He could force himself on her if he wanted—he had the strength, and she was completely at his mercy. But forcing himself on a woman was something he had never, and would never, do.
Satisfied that she had no more weapons on her, he stood so she could have some space and he could think. Dusting the dirt off his pants, he looked at her.
“Well, this explains a lot,” he said, gesturing toward her as he shook his head in disbelief.
She stood up, watching him carefully like he might attack her at any moment. “And what, exactly, do you think it explains?”
The anger had returned to her voice, pleasing Gray. He liked it better when she was angry and not afraid. He was seeing the spunk she showed earlier in a whole new light.
“It explains why you blush every time you look at me,” he said. He didn’t think it was possible for someone to turn as deep a shade of red as she did right before his eyes. Even her ears had gone red, and the color traveled down her throat.
“I don’t blush when I look at you.”
He threw back his head and laughed heartily at her denial. How could she possibly believe that he didn’t see her blushing in embarrassment every twenty seconds?
His memory flashed back to the river, and how she had shrieked when he’d taken off his clothing. Things were finally starting to make sense.
“Red, there’s no use in denying it. It’s only me and you out here.”
“Stop calling me that.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
He ran his hands over his face, rubbing his chin. “How is this possible?” he asked, shock reverberating through his body.
How had a woman as beautiful as she ended up as a bounty hunter? Women in the West weren’t like the women from big cities like Chicago, but they still didn’t end up in situations like this.
She must have had other options. Like marriage. Or relying on a family member. What had happened to make bounty hunting the best option?
She shrugged, stubbornly choosing to remain silent.
Thinking harder about why she might have gotten into bounty hunting, he guessed, “If you’re doing this, that can only mean you’re running from something, or someone.”
She snapped her mouth shut and firmly pressed her lips together, refusing to answer again.
There it was. Her reaction told him everything he needed to know.
“Who are you running from?” he pressed.
“Don’t act like any of this matters,” she said, dodging the question. “My past means nothing. Whether I’m hiding from someone or not doesn’t matter. Just let me go, and we can both forget this even happened and move on with our lives.”
It stoked his curiosity that she didn’t want to answer his questions. It made him want to figure her out even more.
Was she hiding from a lover? A flash of jealousy coursed through him at the thought. He didn’t like the idea of her being with a man.
“It matters to me,” he said with sincere worry. He might be able to help her with whatever she was running from.
She shook her head again, remaining silent.
“Is it a husband?”
Her eyes widened and she stared at him in complete silence. Did that mean he’d been right? Or was he completely off base?
“Just let me go,” she repeated. “I promise I won’t come after you. If you let me leave.”
Not only did he not trust what she said, he didn’t like the idea of her having to hide from someone. He felt strangely protective of her, even though he hadn’t known her long at all. And whoever she was running from could cause problems if they showed up while they were together. Suddenly Luke wasn’t the only person he was worried might find them.
But he couldn’t exactly keep her close, either, since she was a bounty hunter. She was exactly the kind of person he couldn’t trust. If he kept her around, she’d find a way to turn him or Luke in for the reward.
This complicated things. Knowing now that she was a woman, he couldn’t leave her on her own without a horse or a way to get back to town. But if he gave her a horse, then she could come after them.
Taking a deep, unsteady breath, he weighed the options. As much as he didn’t like it, he knew what he had to do. Anyone could find her out here and hurt her, including whoever she wasn’t telling him about.
Before he could tell her what he had decided, Gray heard the unmistakable sound of a horse coming toward them. Dread filled his stomach. In all their scuffling, he hadn’t gotten his gun back, and he had taken all her weapons and thrown them into the dirt several yards away. They were defenseless.
Her eyes widened as she became aware of the sound, and snapped to the direction of the approaching horse.
He shouldn’t have let her consume his thoughts so much that he allowed someone to sneak up on them.
“Quick!” she said. “Untie me and give me a gun!”
She stuck her bound hands out to him, but he shook his head. As if he was going to let her go and allow her an opportunity to escape and cause trouble for him again.
“Are you kidding me?” Her voice was getting louder with each word. “You’d rather risk death than give me a weapon to help defend us?”
“I’d rather give myself a weapon, Red,” he said. “Where’s my gun?”
Her lips pursed defiantly. She wasn’t going to tell him where his gun was, any more than he was going to give her a weapon.
“Fine,” he said. “I don’t need a gun.”
He grabbed one of the daggers that he had removed from her, and slipped it in his belt lop, and moved his shirt to cover it from view.
“Stand behind me,” he demanded. “We can’t have them seeing you’re a prisoner. If they are just passing through, then hopefully we can get them to leave quickly.”
She grumbled but complied, walking behind him to shield herself from whoever was approaching.
Without a gun of his own, and having taken all the weapons from the woman, he hoped it was only Luke and not somebody else coming for them.