The Outlaw's Angel (Daughters of the Prairie 1)

Well, only once.

He obliterated that thought from his mind.

“It wasn’t bad, huh?” He chuckled, rubbing the sweat from her belly and dragging the rag through her pretty triangle of black curls.

“Oh!” She clasped a hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean it like that. It was wonderful. Amazing. I went to heaven. Truly, I did.”

“That’s better.” He grinned at her, admiring the healthy flush of her cheeks. She was so beautiful. His cock continued to grow. Had a damn mind of its own. He returned the cloth to the basin and crawled into bed next to her. She turned toward him and snuggled into his arms.

He sighed, content. Hell, he wasn’t content. He was happy.

Positively ecstatic.

All because of this pretty preacher’s daughter with the soul of an angel. Such a wonderful woman. And she loved him. Robert Morgan. Bounty Hunter. Fugitive. Kidnapper. She’d gifted him with her body. More importantly, with her love. He wished he had a gift to give that was worthy of her.

There was one thing. Something he’d never given anyone. Something she’d asked for earlier.

“Naomi?”

“Hmm?” She kissed his chest and flicked her tongue over his nipple. There went his cock again. He gritted his teeth, willing it down. She blinked, and her long black eyelashes tickled his skin.

“You asked how I understood when you said you felt violated.” He cleared his throat, his voice shaking. “It was twenty-two years ago. I was ten years old.”

“Bobby, you don’t have to.”

“Shh. Yes, I do. I want to.” He closed his eyes and let the visions appear. Images, sounds, smells he’d kept buried for over two decades. The acrid stench of beef flesh and manure burning in the barn. The guttural soul-wrenching screams of his mother. The cowardly pleas of the man who’d sired him. Then the war cry that closed his father’s yellow eyes for the last time, never to see again the face of the son who was his spitting image. The soundless scalping, oozing blood, and then the sticky crimson liquid trickling down the bronze arm of the savage who carried his pa’s light brown hair, as the other took his turn with his mother. Again, the war cry.

Always the war cry.

His voice s

hook. “I’d fetched some water for my ma. It was my pa’s birthday and she was busy making a cake. She didn’t have saleratus, though, so she used extra eggs for leavening.” Strange he remembered that silly detail. He hadn’t given it a thought in forever, but now it rushed into his mind like a freight train, with the vivid colors and actions of a stage play in New York City. The damn saleratus. He’d enjoyed helping his mother in the kitchen, even enduring his father’s taunts of “sissy” and “mama’s boy.”

But it had been his father, the coward, who begged for his life at the hands of those brown invaders. Had offered his wife and son up on a platter, if only they’d let him live.

Who was the real sissy? Bobby had gotten out of his share of scrapes in the past two decades, and never once had he begged for his life. He took a long, deep breath.

“I came back up the trail to the house and heard my ma’s screams. I...I dropped the water and ran to the window. Two Indians were in the house, dressed in buckskins. I wanted to scream, but I was scared. I—” He breathed. “I should have helped my mother.”

“You were a small boy, Bobby.” Naomi fingered the hair on his chest. “Of course you were scared.”

“That was the last time I was scared.” He cleared his throat. “My pa came through the front door, and I watched as one Indian throttled him in the stomach and then held him with a hunting knife. He spoke foreign words, while the other—”

“The other what, Bobby?”

“He raped my mother.”

“R-Raped?” Naomi’s sweet voice trembled.

“It’s what Ike tried to do to you, angel.”

“Oh, my!” Naomi gasped and buried her head deeper into his chest.

Damn. He hadn’t meant to upset her. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no. I’m fine. It’s just...your poor mother. Go on.”

“I had no love for my pa. But my ma, she understood me. She loved me and I her. When that savage ripped her clothing and forced himself on her, in the midst of her screams, I wished for nothing more than to be big and strong like my father, so I could fight for her and protect her.”