Roped In

Inside, the darkness was cut only by a sliver of moonlight from the gaping curtains. It was enough to show him the lower half of the bed, where his saloon girl rested. She lay facedown, her dress gathered near her hips in a bunch of satin, her long legs still encased in the fishnet pattern of her stockings.

He heard breathing, even and soft.

Nicki—she hadn’t been kidding with that note.

Waiting for my outlaw to break out of his cell and be with me, his woman, the saloon girl with the fishnet stockings and garters…

But had she already fallen asleep?

Well, yeah. That’d make sense with the scenario in the note. The outlaw coming back to his hideaway and finding the saloon girl in his bed, waiting for him.

Someone who’d allow him a little escapade, just for a night, he reminded himself.

He pulled up the bandanna over the lower half of his face and moved to the bed. He heard her sigh, then shift restlessly in a rustle of that maddeningly alluring dress.

Yup, he was a bad, bad man on the run from the law, and he was going to show this woman just how dangerous meeting with him could be.

He went to the foot of the mattress, rested his hands on her stocking-covered ankles. Warm under the silk. Delicate.

Easing his hands higher, he coasted his thumbs over her calves.

She sighed again, wiggling her hips.

Lust, pure and simple, bolted through Shane, making his cock hard, and he moved his hands higher, over the backs of her knees, over her thighs, where her stockings ended and garters began.

He heard her breathing hitch, and he knew the game was really on now.

And if this was how Nicki wanted it, he was ready to play it.

“Don’t make a sound,” the outlaw whispered, reaching under her dress. “Not a word…”

IN THE HAZE OF A DREAM—the aftermath of the fantasy she’d had before drifting off to sleep, one that seemed incredibly real—Nicki felt the outlaw’s hands on her rear end, cupping her.

Don’t make a sound. And she didn’t as her face rubbed against the bedcovers, her hands pressed against the mattress. Her breasts were flattened beneath her, making them feel swollen, raw against the quilting.

In that foggy dream, she felt the bed dip as the bandit climbed onto it, heard the box springs creak. His legs brushed the outside of hers as he straddled her.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he said in a deep Western drawl, a whisper above the stillness of the night.

She moaned in answer.

He slipped his hands—big, work-roughened hands—from her butt to her hips, then…

Oh, then underneath, to her belly.

Her muscles there jumped, and the tiny flinches made her gasp. Desire nipped at her skin, and she felt plumped, aching, slippery. Ready already.

He spoke again, rough and ready, too. “You knew this is the only place I can hide out. You waited for me.”

A hunted man, she thought. A fugitive from the law.

Dangerous.

And he sounded just like Shane.

That revved her up even more in her dream-state, and she lifted her hips, knowing he was tender and gentle underneath his dangerous exterior. Her fantasy man took that as a sign to go on, coaxing his hands into her undies.

She muffled her moan.

He laughed, low and lethal, easing a finger between her slick folds, urging her legs apart. Down, up, circling her clit, taking up where they’d left off before. Her hips moved with his strokes, especially when he used his other hand to pull her back to him, nestling her rear end against him.

Her fantasy man was hard. She could feel the ridge of him even through his pants and the cotton of her undies.

Panting, she felt her breath, moist and hot, against the covers. She was still in a fever dream, a million miles away from the Nicki she’d always known.

Grinding back against him, she made him moan, too, his hands grasping her hips as he encouraged her to go on, harder. Slower.

The feel of him…Even in a dream, the primal need hit her hard. Damn it, she wanted him inside her without anything between them.

He coasted his finger up and into her, just like earlier, when she’d touched herself and exploded by just thinking about him. But this time it was better, more intense.

He swept his finger around while using his palm to press against her clit. She couldn’t do anything but make little helpless sounds, couldn’t even find her voice so she could tell him that this wasn’t enough. She wanted it all.

She rocked against him, every cell in her body palpitating, stomping in an all-consuming rhythm that beat on her damp skin, in her ears, in her temples. There was a pressure in her that she’d never felt before—a rising joy that she rode up and up.

“There,” he said on a near growl. He churned his erection against her, echoing the sinuous movement with his hand on her sex…in her sex. “You like it bad, don’t you?”

Yes, she did.

She was getting so high that she didn’t think she could go any further, her body tight, ready to fly open. And, when he snuck his other hand to her clit again, working it until she couldn’t stand another second, she broke.

Bursting apart, pieces of her all around, in the air, tumbling, trying to find a place to fit together again during this freefall.

Showering like rain.

A storm.

A banging, breath-stealing push of shudders as she fell back to the bed, crying out against the mattress as he covered her mouth with his hand.

As Nicki sucked in breath upon breath against his skin, she opened her eyes part way, still in the dream.

But…

She blinked.

Calluses on his hand. The taste of skin—musky, male.

The hint of her juices on him, too.