Page 42 of The Bastard Heir (The Gilded West #2)

Chapter Twenty

C astillo woke her up the next morning with kisses and murmured love words in Spanish. She opened her eyes to his tousled head and smiling eyes.

“I need you again,” he mumbled against her neck as his fingers skimmed up and down her body.

She needed him, too, and held him against her.

Carolina had laid her heart before him last night, and he’d not taken it.

She refused to let the bitterness of that come between them.

How could she be bitter about his refusal to give up his dream when she wasn’t able to give up hers?

Maybe Aunt Prudie was right. Maybe this was the point where she had to have faith that it would work out. Somehow.

“I need you, too,” she whispered and savored his groan as he moved between her thighs.

Blindly, she reached for the tin on the bedside table and pulled out the last prophylactic.

He raised up enough so that she could reach between them and help him slide it on, and then he fell over her.

They made love gently and slowly. He lingered over her, careful of the tenderness of her untried body.

Neither one of them were willing to deny themselves the pleasure of just one more time before she left.

Once it was over, they held each other, barely speaking lest something break the spell of their love.

Finally when it was time, they helped each other dress.

As they left the hotel and walked the few blocks to the train station, he slipped his hand into hers and gave it a squeeze.

She smiled as the warm comfort of his presence filled in all the hollows in her body.

Gazing up at his profile, she noted his strong jaw with the bit of scruff he hadn’t bothered to shave that morning.

The memory of how it had rasped the skin of her breasts as he’d moved over her made her blush.

It didn’t seem fair that this beautiful man was her husband and she’d only have the one night with him.

It didn’t seem fair that he was hers, but not as much as she was his.

He felt her watching and looked down at her, giving her a half smile. “You know, I’ve been thinking.” His boots thudded on the wooden planks of the boardwalk with each step. She thought she’d remember the cadence of his step for as long as she lived.

“About what?” she asked when he paused.

“I spent so much time worried about your virginity…and here we are, married with a proper deflowering on our wedding night.” The smile stayed intact while his heavy gaze raked down to her lips.

She knew she was blushing at his crude words even as they pulled a laugh from her. She couldn’t seem to stop blushing around him. “Maybe next time you’ll listen to me,” she quipped.

He threw back his head and laughed. When his eyes met hers again, they were filled with so much emotion that a lump welled in her throat.

The train’s sharp whistle cut through the air with the quarter-hour warning.

The hotel had sent her trunk ahead hours ago, but only now did leaving feel real to her.

She hadn’t even realized they’d come to a stop on the boardwalk until his fingertips touched her face and ran across her bottom lip.

His touch was heated, awakening all the nerve endings that had been slumbering, sated from their night together.

“Oh, Carolina,” he whispered, his eyes heavy lidded and dark.

Someone jostled past them, prompting him to take her arm and lead her to an abandoned storefront, set into the corner of the brick building.

They were only a block from the station now, where her parents and Aunt Prudie were waiting for her.

Pushing her back against the paper-covered glass window, he kissed her.

It was a proper goodbye kiss filled with passion and longing, a tender reminder of how they’d passed their wedding night.

“Come with me,” she whispered when they broke apart to catch their breaths.

“We have the money my father settled on me. We can find a little house near the university.” She wasn’t certain Castillo had even read the paperwork he’d signed yesterday.

Her father had settled a healthy amount of money on them with their marriage.

It wouldn’t last indefinitely, but it’d be enough to last them for a few years.

She knew how he felt about his father and the silver mine.

He wouldn’t have to touch that if he didn’t want to.

She pressed her hands against his chest, trying her best to memorize how he felt against her. The memories would have to last.

“I cannot.” His voice was low and he’d closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against hers. “My life is here, and your life will be better without me in it.” When he opened his eyes, she saw that he truly thought that.

Despite her resolve to not allow bitterness to overtake the morning, a shard of anger tore through her. “You’re too stubborn to see how things could be so much better for us.”

“I’m not stubborn, Carolina.” He kept his voice calm and stroked her cheek. “I’m realistic.”

The sting of tears prickled the backs of her eyes, but she refused to give in to them.

They were little more than self-pity. The simple truth was that he didn’t love her as much as she loved him.

She shoved him away, intent on making her way to the train station alone.

Better to get used to being without him now.

Before she’d gotten two steps past him, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her around so she fell into his chest, and he supported her with his back to the window, much the same as he had held her on the train.

Only, this time, he was searching her face, looking for some answer when she didn’t even know the question.

He whispered her name again and kissed her, gripping her face gently with his hands.

She didn’t see the man approach or sense his presence until it was too late.

***

Castillo opened his eyes to a world that had changed.

Or maybe he was the one who’d changed. One moment he was holding Carolina in his arms and the next she’d been pulled away from him.

He grabbed at her but was a second too late.

Her eyes were wide with fear as she was whisked around the corner and into the alley, a large arm wrapped around her shoulders and pulling her away.

He only got a glimpse of a dark shadow as she disappeared.

Pulling his gun from its holster, he bolted after her, rushing around the corner and into the alley.

Derringer stood there, looking dirty and disheveled, his hair a bright beacon of white in the shadows, with her in his arms, the muzzle of his Colt .

45 held against her temple. She gripped his forearm, her knuckles white as she tried to loosen his hold, but he only tightened his grip.

Castillo’s blood ran cold. He’d faced down enemies before and always managed to find a cold focus as he did it.

It allowed him to stay calm and measure the outcomes of his choices before he acted.

Not this time. This time he couldn’t see past the one outcome that scared the life out of him. Carolina’s lifeless body lying on the dirty ground. Just thinking of it made his fingers numb.

“Stop where you are, Reyes.” Derringer’s voice was cultured, calm despite the fact that they were in an alley holding guns.

Castillo stopped, but he took in their surroundings, looking for a place someone could hide.

The alley was littered with debris, a broken chair, a forgotten weather-beaten sign advertising an apothecary leaning against the brick wall, but there was nothing large enough to hide a man.

He couldn’t see the roof, though, so he figured that’d be the most likely spot for someone to be hiding, ready to unleash a hail of bullets.

Derringer had probably been staked out all night waiting for his chance.

Damn, Castillo should’ve been more prepared instead of being so infatuated with his wife. He’d put her at risk because he couldn’t keep his hands off her. She would die in an alley because of him.

“Put the gun down nice and slow.” Derringer’s tone was that of a man meeting a long-lost friend in a saloon. It didn’t seem right. Something about this was very, very wrong.

“I can’t do that, Buck. You need to let her go.” Castillo gauged the distance between them to be about nine feet, give or take. He’d be able to reach Derringer quickly, but not before the man had a chance to pull the trigger.

“Put that gun down or I’ll shoot her right now.”

Derringer didn’t betray impatience in his voice or demeanor.

Castillo’s only clue was the subtle tightening of the man’s finger on the trigger.

In the split second it took for Castillo to make that assessment, he realized that Derringer held everything that had ever mattered to Castillo in his arms—his hopes and dreams for a better future.

Because if Castillo walked out of that alley without her, he wouldn’t care about the hacienda or restoring the ranch to a profit.

He only cared about Carolina. He wanted to know that she walked the Earth, that she was happy and cared for.

In that moment, his quest for vengeance became a thing of the past.

“Don’t hurt her, Buck. Please.” His voice shook a little and he sent up a silent prayer. Take me, not her. Please, God, not her.

Derringer smiled, and then he laughed a little as if the joke was too funny not to.

“Oh, I’m going to hurt her, Castillo. I’m going to hurt her so badly that she’ll wish she was dead long before I get to that part.

” His eyes were cold under the brim of his bowler hat.

He looked like madness. The wind picked up as if prompted by his words and blew through his shoulder-length, bright white hair.

Castillo’s mouth went dry, but he knew if he dropped his gun he’d lose any chance he had to free her. “If you plan to kill her anyway, I’ll keep my gun.”