Page 13 of The Copper Heir (The Gilded West #1)

He met her challenging gaze and though it was too dark to see the emotion they held, he felt that look in his gut.

It scorched a path all the way down. He wanted her beneath him.

His erection swelled against the confines of his pants with the need to claim her.

Not tonight, not while she was his prisoner, but already the fact that she was his enemy was beginning to hold little sway over his desire, a situation he’d never faced before.

He’d never met anyone like her. It was jarring just how much he liked her. He’d never turn his back on his brothers, and his loyalty to Cas was more important to him than anything else, but something about her made him want to think of a different future. A future where he could have her.

The intensity of his stare should have sent her screaming into the night.

It should have at least warned her that she was in over her head.

It did neither. It left her body throbbing with a need she was too smart to give in to, but not too ignorant to completely understand.

How she could want to give herself so completely to this man, to this enemy who had abducted her solely for the purpose of reaching her stepfather, should have filled her with a self-disgust that would shame her for years to come. But it didn’t, or it hadn’t yet.

She swung her gaze forward to break his hold and did her best to move forward, to keep space between them.

She’d been completely unprepared for how he would overwhelm her.

His torso pressed against the length of her back as he leaned forward, a move she thought was deliberate until she realized he did it to navigate them up a slope.

Regardless of the reason, he was all around her at once.

His smell, the heat of him, the solid reassurance of his large body behind her.

Reassurance. It was a tricky word and one she wouldn’t have thought to attribute to him, but once it crossed her mind it felt right.

No one would harm her as long as he was there at her back.

The truth of that was as unsettling as it was comforting, so she tried not to dwell on it and took another bite of her jerky.

“Look...” he sighed and his voice sounded weary “...just because Campbell and I are enemies, doesn’t mean that you and me can’t be friends.”

“I’m not usually friends with people who tie me up and hold me captive, but I can make an exception given there really is no other choice.”

“Fine.” The word came out a bit clipped.

His sudden anger made her unreasonably angry. “My apologies. Should I not have reminded you that until half an hour ago you had me bound from the rafters and even now my wrists—”

“Enough.”

She opened her mouth to reply but shut it just as quickly.

What are you doing, Em? You’re supposed to make friends, make him trust you.

All hope of escaping that night had long since drained away from her, fading with the echo of the first terrifying gunshot back at the shack.

He was so large there was almost no chance that she could forcibly push him from the horse, and without a weapon she didn’t dare try it and get herself tied up again.

Instead, she would bide her time until she could use her powders and in the meantime get information from him.

If she put an end to their friendship he’d be less likely to tell her anything.

Swallowing the bitter dredges of her pride, she said instead, “You’re right. I’d like it if we could be friends. I’m sorry, I’m just tired and irritable.”

He grunted behind her, but didn’t say anything, and she knew their tentative peace was over for now. They rode throughout the rest of the night, keeping close to the trees when they could and only breaking into a gallop when the trees gave way to open grassland.

By the time the sun had made its way above the flatlands to the east, she was aware that someone must be following them.

She never saw or heard anyone, but he kept looking backward and twisting back and forth across the creek so often that she was certain he was trying to cover their progress.

When she asked, he gave another noncommittal grunt that she decided meant he didn’t want to talk about it.

Finally, about midmorning, when she had already nodded off more times than she could count, he turned them toward the mountains and they began to make an ascent into the foothills.

Never comfortable around horses, and even less so on the steep climb, she wrapped her hands around the steely arm that held her tight.

Sometime just after sunrise when they had stopped briefly, he’d shoved a handful of dried apples at her and ordered her to eat them.

They churned in her belly now, threatening to make an unfortunate reappearance.

“I’ve got you,” came his reassuring voice behind her.

It probably wasn’t that steep. The horse never skidded or lost its footing at all, but every change in elevation seemed more dramatic from the back of a horse. They didn’t go very far, but the path was treacherous, forcing them to move slowly and making him tense behind her.

“Where are we going?” she only managed to ask once she’d closed her eyes.

“There’s a place just up here where we can take cover for a bit.”

Her hopes of escape plummeted, because she had absolutely no idea how far they were from town at this point.

She knew they had headed north, but had no idea when they had actually passed Whiskey Hollow and her home.

The girls would be worried sick by now, but she knew that Jake would have gotten to them.

He was a man of his word and he’d always looked out for her and the children.

At least they were safe. “Is someone following us?”

“Doubt it. I obscured our trail, but if someone is looking for us, they’ll find it eventually. We’ll stay hidden just to make sure.”

When they came to a stop, she opened her eyes to see the tops of the chokecherries and spruces just below them.

They went blurry for just a moment before she blinked the exhaustion away and made herself look forward, away from the drop off.

The mountain rose up ever higher, one giant mound of rocks and dirt covered in grasses in every shade of green and brown.

There was no path here and a near-vertical slope, but he sensed her question and raised his arm to point ahead.

Just in the shadows along the side of the sheer slope was a gouge in the earth, really just a natural separation of the rocks that would give them a small roof over their heads and an opening at each end to crawl out of.

With the mountain at their back, the side facing the world was partially obscured with rocks.

“Don’t worry. We’ll have an excellent view if we were followed.” With those words of optimism, he dismounted and helped her down.

Her knees immediately threatened to buckle and every muscle in her body protested the long ride.

He grinned at her as he grabbed her hips to steady her, that flash of white that managed to transform his granite face from stone to something close to human.

Her stomach flipped despite her discomfort as she bent over to rub her thighs.

“Come on.” The smile was still in his voice as he put an arm around her waist and helped her to the makeshift cave.

Waiting until she crawled her way under the overhang of rock, he walked back to grab the gear from the horse, making an extra trip for the saddle.

“I’m taking the horse back down to the trees. I’ll only be a couple of minutes.”

It occurred to her then that now would be an excellent time to escape, but she couldn’t so much as lift herself from the unladylike sprawl her muscles had frozen into.

She watched his head bobbing as he walked away, waiting for it to disappear from her line of sight, telling herself the entire time that as soon as it did, she’d get up and run.

But when it did, she closed her eyes for only a moment and allowed the overpowering bliss of sleep to overtake her.