Outlawed Vengeance

Chapter One

Iwatch as Hannah gently covers the roots of the fragile, broken flower with soil before looking up at me with worried eyes. “Will it be okay?”

“In time, it will heal,” I tell her softly, wishing it were true for all of us.

“Okay, good.” She sighs before leaning into me.

I like the feel of her weight. It tethers me, even on days when all I want to do is float away.

I’ve been physically hurt more times than most people ever experience in a lifetime.

I’ve had to wait for bruises to fade and bones to knit back together.

In a twisted way, it’s fascinating that it takes so much longer for the unseen injuries to heal.

A broken heart, a shredded soul, your trust in tatters—these things take much longer to recover from.

And some, you never recover from at all.

The urge to give in—to give up—beats at me every day.

But some part of me refuses to give Austin the satisfaction of knowing he’s won.

“Calliope?”

“Yes, Cookie?” I look down into her worried, wide eyes.

“When will you stop being sad?”

I swallow around the lump in my throat and force a semblance of a smile onto my lips. “Soon. I’m a little like this flower you found.”

“Someone stomped on you, too?” she asks, affronted on my behalf. This time, my smile is genuine, even if it is tinged with sadness.

“Yeah, I guess they did. But just like the flower, I’m healing.”

I’m not sure if that’s the truth, but it’s what Hannah needs to hear. That’s all that matters to me.

“Hey Hannah, it’s time for your lesson,” Belle, our new horse trainer, calls out.

As much as it felt like my world was ending, it refused to stay still for everyone else. While I wallowed in a pit of despair, Riggs took the reins, along with Dawn and Jen, and hired Belle and Sarah to help out around the place, easing the load I had been carrying.

“Yippee. Bye, Calliope.” She leaps up and runs over to Belle, who has walked out with Jazzy, one of our most placid horses. Belle has been teaching her to ride every day as an incentive to work hard with her tutor.

“Bye, Cookie.” I watch her skip over to Belle, who waves at me.

I wave back. I don’t get up and go over, not having it in me to make small talk.

Belle seems lovely. She’s young and has a real zest for life that energizes everyone around her.

I can’t help but wonder if everyone hoped she’d rub off on me.

But as of yet, it’s not been enough to snap me out of the protective shell I’ve built around myself.

I turn back to the flower we just planted before I lift my head and gaze over the fields of flowers as far as the eye can see.

If I’d hoped to keep my gift hidden, I’d done a piss poor job.

Though I hadn’t come out and told Dawn or Jen what I could do, let alone the others, people could tell something was different about the Corvis Wing Ranch and me.

You can’t sit in an empty field, sobbing your heartbreak into the soil, only to find that barren space carpeted with color the next day, and not expect people to have questions.

I jolt when a large body sits down beside me, a second before Shepard’s smell envelops me. He doesn’t touch me, doesn’t speak at all. He just sits beside me, and somehow it’s exactly what I need.

It’s been a rough couple of months for all of us.

Shepard questioned what kind of man he was, doing something that went against everything he believed in.

Everything he thought he knew about himself was stripped away, leaving him conflicted about where to go from here.

It didn’t matter whether his actions were out of character for him, because hearing what Austin did altered him in a way that none of us saw coming.

The second it became clear what Austin had done, something in Shepard snapped.

Though he’s found the last few months tough, he doesn’t regret his actions.

And perhaps, that’s been the hardest thing of all for him to accept.

“So today’s the day, huh?” I break the silence and then lay my head on his arm, giving him the cue to lift it and wrap it around me.

“Yeah, feels weird.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know. Weird different. I’m not sure this is who I am anymore.”

“Being sheriff was never who you were, just what you did. And you are a good sheriff, Shepard. Trust me, I know the difference.”

“I know you do.” He blows out a deep sigh before kissing my temple. “I just don’t know if this fits me anymore.”

“Well, there is only one way to find out.”

We spent weeks waiting for IA to investigate what happened while Shepard was suspended.

We expected him to lose his job and possibly face jail time.

In a fucked-up twist of fate, Austin forced IA’s hand.

He confessed he lost his mind for a moment and made a move to attack me, forcing Shepard to draw his weapon and fire.

As grateful as I was for Shepard’s name to be cleared, I hate Austin more for being the one to do it.

My only comfort came in the knowledge of him waking up in the hospital room alone after major surgery to remove the bullet that had missed his heart by a millimeter.

He had nobody to spend time with him while he recovered, or to help him when he was discharged and went home, though I’m sure he hired a team of minions to help him.

“I feel like a hypocrite,” Shepard admits.

“You protected me. Maybe it looked different than it usually does, but it’s not every day you find out that a man you trusted raped the woman you love.”

He flinches, making something curdle in my stomach. Not because I think it makes him see me differently, but because it makes him see the world differently and distrust his instincts.

He holds me tighter, and I know if he could take it all away from me, he would. But this world has never been kind to me. What it has done is prepare me for moments like this. I might be struggling now, but I know how to claw my way back.

“I love you, Shepard,” I tell him softly.

He tips his head down so he can look at me. It’s the first time I’ve told him out loud, scared I’d jinx it.

“Say it again.”

I reach up, cup his face, and stare into the pretty green eyes of one of the few people who has refused to let me shut them out. He’s held me while I’ve sobbed and raged at the world and sat beside me in silence when even talking was enough to overwhelm me.

“I love you. You told me once that you’d prove yourself worthy of me, and you have a million times over.”

He bends and kisses me softly. I lose myself in the moment. Nothing else matters right now, and my whole body relaxes before he pulls away.

“I have to go.”

“I know. But I’ll be here when you get back.”

“I don’t know what time that will be.”

“I’ll still be here.”

He chuckles, kisses the tip of my nose, and stands. I shield my eyes with my hand and look up at him in his freshly pressed shirt.

“You’re not wearing your hat today?”

“I’ll grab it on the way out.”

“Good.”

“You got a thing for cowboys, huh?”

“I’ve got a thing for my cowboys.”

“Good answer. Speaking of cowboys…”

I turn to the direction he’s looking and see Riggs in the distance heading our way on Kane.

“Catch you later, baby,” Shepard calls out. I blow a kiss over my shoulder. “Be safe.”

“Always,” he calls back. I watch his ass as he walks away. I’m only human, and that man’s ass is statue-worthy.

Once he’s gone back in the house, I lie flat on my back and close my eyes, letting the warm sun soothe me.

Today feels like the first day I’ve felt more like the old me.

I don’t know if the old me is who I want to be, or if I should reinvent myself once more.

But I’ll take anything over feeling like a ghost, hanging on to life by its fingertips.

I don’t know how long I lie there for when a shadow falls over me. Before I can open my eyes, I’m picked up and tossed over a naked and sweaty shoulder.

I squeal with laughter, the sound both foreign and rusty as Riggs carries me into the house and upstairs to the room the three of us have been sharing.

We never discussed it, never mentioned Shepard moving in at all.

We gravitated toward each other after what happened.

And well, Shepard never went home, other than to grab clothes and empty his fridge.

I find myself sitting on the counter in the bathroom as all the blood that rushed to my head tries to return to where it came from. Riggs crowds me, spreading my legs so he can slip between them. “You’ve caught the sun,” he says, his voice low as he trails a finger across the bridge of my nose.

“Not all of us look like sun-kissed gods when we’ve been outside.”

I tan well, but not nearly as well as Riggs. He looks like he’s been immortalized in bronze.

What is my fascination with statues today?

He nips my lip when he notices my brain has wandered. “How was Shepard? I hoped to catch him before he left, but I had to help fix some fencing.”

“He’s feeling…I won’t say nervous, but out of sorts, I guess. I’m not sure his heart is in it anymore.”

He sighs. “I was worried about that. You and I have fucked-up stories that led us down a darker path than Shepard’s.

And though his story is grim, he used it to make things better and built a life for himself that would make people proud.

He knew what he wanted, and he went for it.

Which is pretty fucking cool. But it makes it harder for him to navigate now that his life has been derailed.

You and me are so used to having our lives derailed, we’ve made an art out of it. ”

I snort at that, making him laugh. “We made a home in the shadows. Instead of fighting the system that fucked us over, we sank ourselves into it and made it our own. You know what the difference is between redemption and revenge? A flip of a coin.”

I smooth my hands down his shoulders, the warmth of his skin seeping into my fingertips. “I don’t regret the choices I made or the ones I will, but I feel sad that because of his association with me, Shepard’s life is tainted now.”

“I’m not dismissing what you’re saying, Opie. I’m really not, but you’re discounting how much color you brought into his life, too.”

“But is it worth it?”

“I can only speak for myself when I answer. But fuck yes, it’s worth it. You’re worth it. You’re worth everything.” He cups the back of my head and kisses me, sealing his words with a promise.

His truths taste like gold, pouring sunshine into my veins. But it’s not enough to erase the memories of the lies I swallowed so greedily from Austin, or the bitterness they left behind as I let them infect every part of me.

When he pulls back, he swipes his thumb under my eyes, gathering a tear I didn’t realize I’d cried. He licks it clean, then takes a step back and strips out of his clothes. He does it slowly, giving me a show, making my blood heat up as he reveals the very sexy prize.

Once he’s naked, he turns on the shower to let it warm up before he walks over to me and slides his hands underneath my tank top. “Shower with me?”

“Is that a request or an order?”

“A request. I’ll save my orders for when you’re sucking my cock.”

I groan, lifting my arms so he can slide the tank top over my head and toss it to the ground. “You’re a damn tease.”

“We both know you love it,” he murmurs against my ear as he unhooks my bra and throws that away too.

He lifts me to my feet, where he wastes no time removing my shorts and panties. Once I’m bare to him, he takes a step back so he can drink me in. “Never gets old. I swear I could just stare at you all day. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life.”

“Riggs,” I whisper, moved by these words.

He strokes his cock as he looks me over. I feel his gaze like a caress everywhere his eyes land. My breathing picks up, my nipples pebble. I slide my hand down my body and slip it between my legs.

He watches me waiting for him, and I can’t even begin to explain how turned on I am, and we’re not even touching. He leans closer, still leaving a gap between us. But I swear I can feel the heat coming off him in waves.

I pull my fingers out of my pussy and hold them up for him so he can see how wet they are. With a growl, he sucks them into his mouth and licks them clean before he kisses me. I taste myself on his lips as I move my hand back to my pussy and stroke my clit. It won’t take long for me to come.

I grip his shoulder with my free hand and dig my nails in to keep myself standing. I lower my head so I can watch him stroke himself. Both of us work ourselves faster, and then he’s right there, pressing his cock to my clit and coming all over my pussy and my hand.

“Fuck my cum into you, Opie.”

I do as he asks, slipping my cum-slicked fingers inside myself as he finishes against my stomach. Using his fingers, he trails his cum up my chest, painting my skin with his seed. I gasp as my orgasm barrels toward me.

He covers my nipple with his cum before he dips his head and sucks it clean. That’s it, game over for me. I come, and I come hard, throwing my head back and crying out his name.

When I finally catch my breath, I look into his far too handsome face and grin. “Now you’ve got me all dirty, you gonna wash my back?”

He kisses up my neck to my jaw before he answers, his lips moving over the edge of my mouth. “Oh, I think I’m going to make you a little dirtier first.”

He pushes me to my knees and drags his wet cock across my lips.

And who am I to argue with that?