The Gunslinger's Gift Read online

  Sophia moved harder and faster on him. She didn’t stop. She needed this every single bit as much from him as he needed it from her. “There,” she sobbed, and with her head falling back, she screamed his name let her release break free.

  His arm held her tight to his body as he rubbed her clit, drawing her climax out. Over and over, he slammed into her body until he finally stilled deep inside of her. His teeth latched onto her shoulder as he growled out her name and heat flooded her sheath in long splashes.

  Sophia screamed out his name a second time. She liked the way that heated moisture felt when he tightened like that. “Gods,” she whimpered. “Was that your orgasm?” she asked, as she collapsed against him. “Heavens, that was so very, very good. I think we need to do that a lot.”

  “Was what, what?” James sounded confused. And more than a little dazed. “Damn, woman, I think you might have killed me.” He laughed softly, hugging her close to him as he pressed kisses along her throat and jaw.

  “The heat that I feel inside of me. Was that your orgasm?” she asked again with a smile and rubbed her cheek to his shoulder. “I like it. If you’ve been killed, then I’m dead too.”

  He gave her a squeeze. “The heat you feel inside is my orgasm. It’s the semen that releases when I come. It’s what, one day, I hope, will get you pregnant with our child.”

  “A baby?” She sat back on him, moaning when she did. “Oh, lordy.” She couldn’t believe how good it felt, even with them both being spent. “I didn’t think about that. It’s not something we have to worry about for a while, right? I mean, something like that doesn’t happen right away, right?”

  “Not usually, no,” he said. “But we should likely see about some contraceptives, if you want to wait a while. The more we keep going, especially with me spilling inside of you like I’ve been, the higher the chances are. We’ll stop by the medical offices and have them give you a check-up and see what options you might be open to. For now, though, I think I’ll have to use condoms. No method is a hundred percent, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Okay. You don’t like that idea, do you? Condoms, that is?” She moved in closer and once more wrapped her arms around him. “We’ll go to medical and see about getting me on something. I think that Viv takes a shot…or no, it’s something that was implanted inside of her, but I’m not sure what it is.” She shrugged. “Medical will know.”

  “They will at that,” he said. “And no, I don’t really like condoms. But I’ll do whatever is necessary to ensure you’re happy. If you’re not ready for babies right away, then we’ll do what’s required until you are. So, try not to worry so much, Soph.”

  “Thank you.” She didn’t think that anyone else would be as understanding of her needs. “I think that we should spend a great deal of time together before we think of babies. We’re both really young, and while I love you, I think that right now, you and me just getting to know each other, traveling and enjoying life together, is good. Right?”

  “Whatever you want, Soph.” He smiled. Pressing a kiss to her lips, he squeezed her close. “Let’s get out of the tub before you start to prune up. You need to eat, and so do I if you keep attacking me as you are wont to do. Not complaining, just so you know, making a statement is all. After we eat, I’ll call down to medical for an appointment.”

  “Sounds good.” Sophia laughed and looked up at him. “And I’m attacking you?” She was grinning. “Well, okay, so I’ll definitely be the one who owns that. ’Cause I saw you naked, and I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Not complaining in the least,” he assured her. Pressing another kiss to her lips, he lifted her to her feet. “Out you get. Careful, now.” Standing up behind her, he gave her a hand out of the tub, holding on until she had both feet on the rug. After pulling the plug to drain the water, he stepped out next to her.

  She grabbed a towel from the heated rack and passed him one, as well. “Now, then. Dry, food, and then we’ll attack each other again.” Okay, so she might have a one-track mind, and that was the truth. She seriously loved James and the way that he touched her and felt her and everything. She loved every single part of it.

  “Good Gods, I’ve created a sexual monster.” Laughing, he bent over to dry his legs. “I, for one, am eternally glad that you like making love with me, Soph. Let’s see how you’re feeling after we eat, before you jump my bones again. You might be a little stiff, honey, and we don’t want to hurt you.”

  “So, what did you bring us for food?” He had helped her sate one hunger, for the time being. Now, it was time to sate the other.

  “Stuff without faces for you. Not as easy as it sounds in a place that caters to Guardians who need and demand large quantities of meat. I think I managed, though. By the skin of my teeth, of course, but you should be nice and full by the time we finish eating.” James hung up his towel, grabbed up his clothing, and walked into the bedroom buck ass naked.

  She chuckled. “Well, we’ll just have to make lists for the store. Because I have to have food. Tofu is a good thing. I know most people turn their noses up to it, but it’s actually tasty with the right seasonings.”

  “That’s a soybean something or other, isn’t it?” he asked, wrinkling up his nose. “I’ve heard about it. You can eat whatever you want, Soph. Just don’t expect anyone around here to jump on board with your unique, ‘no faces’ diet plan. Then again, we don’t have your same ties to nature, so we’re not as affected by it as you are.”

  “That’s okay. I wouldn’t even dream of trying to push anyone to eat as I do. I lived with Viv for the last long while, and I was able to survive with her, and she was able to survive with me. She’s tried what I eat and didn’t like it, so I don’t attempt to push it on her again. I wouldn’t do that to you, either. Especially, since I love the heck out of you.”

  “Thank the gods above,” he said, with a moan of pure relief. Grinning at her, he tugged her close and hugged her to him. “We’ll go to the store and get you whatever you want. We can cook here in our suites. I just never have, because I don’t know how. It wasn’t exactly a necessary skill set for a gunslinger. I’ll even try whatever you come up with, once. Because I love you and support all your choices, no matter how weird I find them to be.”

  “I’ll teach you how to cook. It might not be the necessary trade for a gunslinger, but it is something that’s good to have when you’re mated. Although, I likely won’t let you cook a lot, because I love to.”

  “Whatever you want, Soph.” Pressing a kiss to her nose, he let her go. “Do you want a robe while we’re eating? Or are you comfortable enough wandering around naked?”

  “As long as it is only the two of us, I’m perfectly fine. Seems as if, when I’m with you, I have absolutely no shame at all.”

  “Not in the least, and we’re completely alone. The front door is locked, so no one can come in here. I’ll warn you now, Merc does have a full set of keys for all the doors in this place. It’s just a safety precaution, in case he can’t get ahold of one of us. Then, he can enter and see if we’re lying unconscious in the bathtub, or something like that. I don’t think he’s ever even used them, but he does have them.

  “I also have two, one for me, and now, one for you as well. I’ll have to get a spare key for whatever space you want to go with eventually, so you can lock it up behind you when you finish each day.” Taking her hand, he led her out to the main room and over to the dining table. “Sit, eat,” he ordered, letting her go to pull out her chair.

  Sophia took a seat and shifted just a little bit. Then, she moved so that she could put her feet up on James’s lap. “There, much better,” she confessed. “I want a space close to here, so that you can come to me anytime you want.”

  “So that you can jump my bones whenever you feel the urge?” he asked, with a grin. Chuckling when she shrugged at him, he pulled a lid off a plate and handed it over to her. “Hopefully, this will do for tonight. Like I said, not a lot of options around this place.” He p
assed her a napkin and utensils.

  “Okay, so we’ll get me a place close after we’ve gone grocery shopping.”

  “We should make sure there’s a bed in there,” he muttered. He’d uncovered the other plate, with a large steak and a smothered baked potato on it, for himself. Shifting forward in his seat, he draped his napkin over her feet with a grin. “Eat up, honey.”

  “We won’t sleep the nights there, though. With the fumes and all, that would be bad.”

  “Yes, fumes are bad,” he agreed. “We can do whatever you want with the space, Sophia. It’ll be yours to do with as you wish. We’ll have to look into using the standing venting for the stove in there to pull out some of the fumes to keep you safe.”

  “That would be good. With no windows. There are portable venting systems that we could install. It’s pricy, but I should be able to swing it.” She picked at the salad before her. “That way, there’ll be something that’s always there and going, cleaning and recycling the air.”

  “You tell me what you need, or want, and I’ll get it for you. I can afford it. You find it online, and I’ll put it on my credit card.” He paused. “What’s with the weird look, Soph?”

  “I just—. I’m surprised,” she admitted to him. “That you have a credit card and credit history in this day and time. With all of the paper trails and so on that are in today’s society, how do you keep yourself hidden?”

  “Oh, it’s not under my name. It’s my account, but it’s under the corporation that Mercury set up. The corporation runs the trust that owns the land The Mountain sits on. Each of us has a card with the corporate name on it. The numbers are all different, which means they can link to any account we want.

  “We’re all very carefully hidden behind a wall of corporate names, trusts, and a bunch of other things. It can never be traced directly to me. Not now, not ever. I don’t exist in this time. Even my ID is all a careful cover for who I really am. We’ve been doing this a long time, Soph. Hell, we were all around for the dawn of the technological age. We saw it coming, and we protected ourselves. As we protect our own.” He squeezed her ankle gently.

  “That’s seriously impressive.” She hesitated and then frowned. “Wait, what about me? I have a small name for myself in the art world. Does this mean I have to stop painting?”

  “No, ma’am, not for a long time,” he said. “Eventually, you’ll have to for a while. But then, you can come back as someone new. Using your previous self as your inspiration. There are plenty of options, honey. We have plenty of time to talk about it and decide how you want it all handled.”

  “Yeah. Besides, most of my paintings have been locked away in my studio. They’re personal to me. The landscapes, however, have always sold like crazy. People love the sceneries from your past.”

  “Really? Weird.” James shook his head. He cut into his steak and took a bite. “Then again, given how much they’ve torn up the territories we once rode freely through, I guess I can understand it. It was so pure and untouched back then. Towns were barely a blip in the big picture of this country. ’Course, most of those towns turned into the modern cities you know so well in the here and now.”

  “Exactly, that’s why they sell so well. They’re amazing places that you’ve been to in your lifetime. You’ve met some interesting characters too. A couple of portraits sold, but I don’t like doing them, because they aren’t you, and the paintings I did of you, I kept. No one was allowed to see those.”

  He shot her a look. “You’ve mentioned that before. Are you going to let me look at them, or am I going to wonder forever what dirty little secrets you’ve uncovered? ’Cause, ma’am, I’ve gotta tell ya, I think ya’ll need to fess up to what ya’ll’s been painting of me right quick,” he told her, laying the accent on super thick at the end.

  “Oh, I’ll let you look your fill,” she disclosed happily. “Just keep in mind that they’re memories that you have of your friends, places you’ve been to, and impression of your own body from mirrors and such.” She was blushing now, and when he growled at her, she sighed. “Okay, so there might be one or two nudes of you where I painted myself up there, as well.”

  He slapped a hand over his mouth and water squirted out his nose a second later. Then, he started to cough as he banged on his own chest. When he had control again, he stared at her, wide-eyed. “You what?” he croaked. “Sophia Anne Duffy!”

  “Oh, shush,” she said, with a laugh. “I did it because I was lonely, and I wanted to feel closer to you while I waited for you to find me.” She sighed.

  Shifting in his chair, he pulled her out of hers and into his lap. “Honey,” he whispered against her temple. “I’m sorry, Soph. I keep forgetting you didn’t have anything remotely close to an ideal childhood. You’re just so happy, well-balanced, and so damn normal, it keeps slipping my mind. I do have to ask, now that my mind is headed down that path, when did you first start picking stuff up from me?”

  Sophia shrugged and chewed her lower lip. “I’ve been doodling you all my life. You and another man, for the longest time. And then, it all shifted maybe fifteen years ago, when all I saw was you. Three years ago is when I painted you nude for the first time.” On the night of her eighteenth birthday, actually.

  She felt him tense. “Are you sure, fifteen years ago?” he asked, softly. At her nod, he swallowed hard enough she could hear it. “Do you remember the first day you noticed he wasn’t in any of my memories, or whatever you pick up on?”

  “I do. I felt such an intense loss that day that it burned into my mind. It was August Ninth, fifteen years ago. I was six. Why? What’s wrong? You look pale. Are you okay, Billy?” She reached out for him, needing to move closer. Wanting to touch him once again.

  He nodded slowly, licking his lips. “Yeah,” he whispered. “That’s the day that William vanished. He showed up later, about three years ago, and tried to kill us all while we were on a job. Fucking nearly got a couple of us too. We were so shocked to see him that not a one of us could even react for a moment. Soph, honey, William was known in the day as Billy the Kid.”

  “Okay.” Sophia frowned then cocked her head to the side. “Wait. How were you both Billy?” She was seriously confused and lost right then. “And the two of you were very close before you died, right? Why would he have turned from the light? Why would he allow himself to go to the Dark?”

  “He was captured on a job, tortured, and turned from good. At least, that’s our guess, but we can’t know for sure. He’s always been a bit of a wild card, so he could have figured the odds and thrown his lot in with them because he wanted to be on the side that looked to be winning.

  “William was nicknamed ‘Billy the Kid’ because he was always called ‘Billy,’ and when he got mixed up with the Regulators, the moniker came to full bloom. It’s when he really made his mark on history. I was always called ‘Wild Bill,’ and a couple of truly daring folks would call me ‘Billy.’ I would like to state, for the record, they forever walked with limps until the day they left this world, for doing so. You’re pretty much the only person I actually let get away with it.”

  Sophia blushed at that. “You have always been Billy to me.” She touched his cheek and grinned. “Always the blue eyed, blond haired, devil-may-care man that kept me sane when I wanted to give in and break down.

  “You said earlier that you forgot what a crappy childhood I had because I’m always so happy. Well, it’s because of you. Even in the worst of times, there was always something that would come to me from nature while I healed or hid, and it would give me more insight into the man that I would love with all my heart. You.”

  “For that alone, you can keep using it,” he said. Dipping his head down, he kissed her softly. “I love you, Soph. If it makes you happy to call me Billy, you go right ahead. But not in front of the other Guardians. Let’s not confuse them any more than necessary.”

  “It’s okay.” She licked her lips and grinned, the taste of James on her tongue. “I think you shoul
d kiss me again, and then we’ll do whatever else it is that we need to do, before we barricade ourselves once more.” She quickly forgot what they were doing when he was close. He made her forget everything, but that wasn’t such a bad thing. He was her salvation, her sanity. “I love you, James Hickok, and I’m afraid you’re stuck with me now, darling man.”

  “Well, hell,” he said, with a grin. Bending her over his arm, he kissed her deeply. Sucking her tongue into his mouth, he teased her as he gently cupped her face. When he let her up, she stayed slumped against his arm, the only thing keeping her from sliding out of his lap. He snapped his fingers before her face and chuckled when she blinked. “There you are, honey. Come on, Soph. Let’s finish eating, and then I plan on tossing you onto the sofa and having my wicked way with you.”

  “I love how you think.” Sophia smiled and leaned in once more. “Mercy.” She kissed the side of his neck then pulled back. Gazing up at him, she took in a deep breath and sighed. “When the paintings come here, you’ll know just how you saved me.”

  “You saved me too, Sophia. Seems only fair,” he told her softly. Pressing another kiss to her lips, he settled her back into her own chair, lifting her feet back into his lap. “Finish your rabbit kibble, so I can do wonderful things to you.”

  That had her laughing, and she pulled back so that she could finish eating. “Oh, I know what we have to do. Go by medical so that I can get all nice and checked out, and they can start me on birth control stuff. I think that would be a good thing to do sooner rather than later, don’t you?”

  The pout he gave her had her laughing again. “You would remember that detail,” he said, with a huge sigh. “You’re right, though. They’ll likely do a blood test first, make sure there’s nothing that the implant, or whatever they put you on, will muck up in your system.”

  She stroked her fingers over his cheek and grinned. “You can always teach me how to put my mouth on you and give you pleasure, you know. We wouldn’t need a condom for that.”