The Man Who Loved Cole Flores (Dig Two Graves 1)

Icy water spilled down Ned’s insides and froze around his heart as he noticed the slight tremble to Cole’s fingers. “You could have let him—”

Cole shook his head, squeezing his hands on the suspenders in anger. “You don’t understand, because you’ve only ridden with us for a month, but this is a hard life, and sometimes it involves staining your hands with the blood of a friend. A quick death was better for everyone. Only a moment of fear and barely any pain. He wouldn’t have gotten even that once they tracked him down. And I—I once made that mistake. Can’t do it again. Tom wouldn’t have it.”

He avoided Ned’s gaze as he spoke, but once he finally glanced up, his face expressed true emotion hidden behind hard words. His eyes glistened in the faint light of Ned’s lamp, and though he stayed at a respectable distance, Ned sensed Cole’s need for touch. Cole’s heart wasn’t pure, but it wasn’t black either. Destiny had dealt him a bad hand of cards, and he played them. Killed people when he had to, and lived to the fullest despite fearing the man who’d given him a family when he’d been a scrawny orphan and desperately needed one.

Ned’s heart thumped, as if it were sucking in all the blood coursing through his body and about to burst. He looked straight into Cole’s eyes when he kicked over the lamp, straight into a rock resting next to his tent.

Cole stepped back as the glass canister at the base broke, and the spilled kerosene transformed the small flame into an explosion of light. Fire ate the canvas of Ned’s tent, ravenous like a bear after a long winter. Mary screamed, and Ned’s neighbor, Saul, rose from the log he sat on, rushing closer to protect his own lodgings. Cole blinked and ran up to a large pot filled halfway with boiled water, but Craw pushed it out of his hands, jumping through a crate of liquor. He grabbed the empty pot as soon as he landed and dug it into the ground like a shovel. Saul took it off him and tossed the contents over the fire, but that only dimmed the flames.

Ned dragged away his belongings, so they’d remain untouched by the fire, but the tent collapsed in a flurry of sparks, despite Craw’s and Saul’s efforts.

“More dirt!” someone shouted, and moments later, the fire was extinguished with the combined work of many pairs of hands.

Saul shot Ned a glare that promised blood and pain but ultimately stepped over the few blazing particles remaining in the pile of dirt, ashen wood, and fabric, too relieved to have saved his own shelter to waste time berating him.

“Really,” Doc said and shook his head at Ned while rubbing dirt off his fingers, but since only Ned’s own quarters had been lost, nobody had a reason to hold a grudge.

“Oh, you poor man,” Judith said, appearing out of nowhere with her thick locks already twisted for the night with strips of white fabric. She took hold of Ned’s hand and rubbed her thumbs up and down its back. “You’ll freeze without shelter. I have spare sheets in my tent—”

Ned’s insides twitched, because he should have seen this coming. He was a decent enough man, and now that Tom had marked him with the cleaver tattoo, his worth as a temporary husband has grown. Many of the women traveling with them sought out such arrangements, as the female nature dictated, and unlike some of the blatant offers he’d received in the past, this wasn’t an outright transaction proposal.

Judith’s bright eyes settled on his, but like Brianna, Tessa, and so many others, she had no appeal to him. It wasn’t her he’d chosen to compromise his own tent for.

“That’s a generous offer, but while I’m not a religious man, my mother’s spirit would have haunted me to the end of my days if I acted improper with a lady.”

Judith cocked her head and opened her full mouth. “We wouldn’t have to be improper—” she whispered as if this display of a strong moral compass had made him even more valuable of a catch in her eyes.

For a moment, it seemed that the whole camp listened to their conversation, as if Ned’s resistance to female charms had somehow betrayed his nature, but he took a deep breath and reassured himself that he wasn’t alone. Adam Wild had prided himself on never betraying his fiancée, since he’d only accepted pleasure the girls gave him with their hands and never kissed them, and Josiah, one of the older men occupying a low tier in the gang’s hierarchy, prayed each day and night to stave off temptations of the flesh.

Ned wasn’t obliged to make women happy with his prick. Neither did he have to explain his reasons, because perversion would be the last thing on people’s minds anyway. “I am really flattered and grateful, but my conscience won’t allow it. Have a good night.”