"How does that feel, sweetheart?"

She arched her back, her hands gripping fistfuls of the quilt. She wanted him. She wanted him. His fingers were moving inside her, his thumb working that sensitive nub. "Logana""

"I'm right here, honey. Tell me what you want."

His fingers curved against the sensitive spot inside her. Again and again. Something within her broke, pulled free, burst to life. His p.e.n.i.s entered her, at last. Thrusting, drawing back, thrusting, he pumped into her. She wanted more of him, all of him. She sat up, fully impaled on him. Pushing up against his thighs, she lifted herself and lowered back over him, meeting his thrusts, feeling him deep within her core.

He sat up behind her, bringing a hand to hold her breast, pressing his face against her shoulder, his tongue tasting her skin. His fingers worked at the top of her s.e.x, bringing her to an instant climax.

When it eased somewhat, he pushed her forward. Still pumping into her, he moved her to her knees. He held her hips, keeping her still until she could not be held still. His c.o.c.k pounded into her, stroking the same spot his fingers had earlier, triggering a ma.s.sive o.r.g.a.s.m within her. She bucked and arched, pushing back against him, her inner muscles gripping him like a fist.

Unable to hold out any longer, he surrendered to the pa.s.sion that blacked out every thought, every emotion. His groin tightened. He pumped again, again, then felt the pulsating release shooting his s.e.m.e.n deep within her. He leaned over her, bracing his weight on his fists while the two of them struggled for air. When the aftershocks subsided, he withdrew and dropped to his back beside her as she collapsed onto the bed.

The room was silent, except for the sound of their breathing. He turned to look at her. She was watching him, her eyes wide. She pushed up on her elbows. "What was that?"

He grinned, a very self-satisfied smile, as he folded his hands behind his head. "That, darlin', was how it's supposed to be."

"It was never like that. Never." Not even their first time together, before Swift Elk's attack. She'd been so afraid of what being intimate with him would be likea"she'd been too tense to fully enjoy what happened between them.

His humor faded. He smoothed a hand over her cheek. "That's because you've never been in love."

She caught his hand, pressed it to her mouth. "I don't want to go to jail, Logan."

Logan forked a hand through his hair. He got up and moved restlessly around the room. "Hawkins knew you had the papers he lost. I'm willing to bet there is no real warrant out for you. I think he was trying to discredit you on the off chance you were bold enough to take the matter to the law. If you showed up with the papers, he could trot out the fake warrant and claim you were the creator of the forgeries, not him." He came back to the bed. Taking her hands, he drew her to her feet. "We'll get to the bottom of this, Sarah. I promise you that."

He wrapped his arms about her, loving the feel of her skin. "Do you think that tub is big enough for both of us?"

Chapter 16.

Logan watched Sarah sleep. He should be as exhausted as she was. They'd made love in the tub, eaten dinner, then made love again, slowly, leisurely. He wanted her again. He couldn't seem to get enough of her. They had only this night with one other before they would have to go back to Cheyenne and face the charges against her. He didn't want to waste a second of it sleeping.

He got up and dressed, then paced around the room. There had to be a resolution to their situation. Maybe he could talk to Eugene, get him to confess, trick him into telling how he'd gotten the Yankton sheriff to write a warrant for Sarah.

Logan opened the door and moved silently down the hall to the last room on this level, the guest room a.s.signed to Declan. He'd no sooner stepped into the sheriff's room than the sound of a pistol being c.o.c.ked brought him up short.

"s.h.i.t, Declan. It's only me."

"What do you want, Taggert?" he snapped as he unc.o.c.ked his gun and set it on the nightstand.

Logan pushed the door open and leaned against the jamb, his thumbs hooked in his pockets. "Sarah's innocent. This warrant is something Hawkins cooked up. I know it."

Declan cursed. "Couldn't we talk about this in the morning?"

"No. Come talk to Hawkins with me. I want to see if I can get him to confess. I want you to stay out of sight but be a witness."

"h.e.l.l, Logan." He threw the covers off and swung his legs over the side. He still wore his denims, but his feet and chest were bare. He sat with his head in his hands for a minute, then straightened and pulled on a shirt.

"Is Sid sending some men to ride shotgun with you tomorrow?" Logan asked, watching the sheriff move about the room, gathering his clothes.

"Yeah." Declan tucked his shirt into his pants and shoved his pistol into his waistband. "Was that you down the hallway screaming earlier tonight?"

Logan grinned. "Didn't know we were so loud."

Declan swiped a hand through his hair. "Well, you were. Had to take a p.i.s.s outside. Thought you two would never get out of the bathroom."

"I finally got her to not be afraid of me, Cal. I can't send her to jail."

Declan looked at him, a.s.sessing him through narrowed eyes. "We're gonna do this within the law. It's the only way she'll ever be able to live free without the worry of what's waitin' ten steps in front of her."

At the front door, the two paused. "How are we going to play this?" Declan asked.

"We'll enter by the side door to the barna"he won't see you come in behind me. You'll keep quiet and out of sight, but come close enough so that you can hear him. I'll get him to talk. We'll see what he says. If he thinks I can get him out of there, he might open up."

The sheriff made a face. "What are you getting me into?"

The stable was dark and empty of animals. Declan removed his boots so that his stockinged feet would make less noise. They moved together into the shadowy s.p.a.ce. Logan took the padlock key from the sheriff and opened the sliding door where Hawkins slept. He slammed the door shut, startling Sarah's first husband awake.

Logan sat on a bale of hay across from Hawkins's bed, waiting for him to shake the sleep from his system. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d sure slept like a baby.

Hawkins looked around, listening for something beyond the walls of his cell. "What do you want, Taggert?"

Logan crossed his arms and leaned back. "Well, now, that's the stuff of nightmares, isn't it?"

Hawkins swiped a hand over his face. "Why are you here?"

"Besides the fun with a stick I promised you? I figure we both want something. I'm thinking about making a deal with you."

"You want my wife."

"My wife is already mine. You were dead and buried when I married her, a state I'd be more than willing to return you to. I want information. If it's good enough, I'll walk out of here and leave the door unlocked. What happens to you after that is up to you. I figure they've got enough to lock you up until your dotage. But they don't know half of what I know about you. Like how you stalked emigrant families in St. Louis, searching for an easy mark, rich in seed money, blinded with visions of the future. Mr. and Mrs. Worthington made it easy for you, didn't they?"

"Don't know what you're talking about."

Logan picked up the large, thick stick he'd brought into the stall. Taking his knife from its sheath, he began whittling a smooth surface about a foot long. "That's okay, Gene," he said, using another of Hawkins's aliases. "The truth has a funny way of coming out."

He grinned at the pale face of the man lying on the floor a few feet from him. Both were equidistant from the stall door. That in itself was a challenge to Hawkins. Logan made another slice along the end of the stick. "So you killed Sarah's parents."

"A runaway freight team did that to them. I can't be blamed for the hostler's carelessness."

"But you just happened to be the first on-site to wail and decry the accident, to bring their broken, battered bodies to Sarah, to console the young, orphaned woman."

"I was the only one who knew they left behind a daughter."

Another slice. "I asked Sheriff Declan to confirm your story about working on several articles for the Philadelphia Bulletin with Mr. Worthington. Something young, bereaved Sarah never thought to do." He made another stroke of the knife, long and slow, the sound of the blade shaving the wood loud in the silent stable.

He held up the stick and looked at it critically. "They never heard of you." He grinned at Hawkins.

"Ain't that a surprise. And then you married her under false pretenses, using a fake namea"which in itself invalidates your marriage. You're wanted in two states and three territories for various felonious activities. That's just what I've been able to uncover so far. This little nonsense with the false land claims is the least of your troubles. I wonder how many times they can hang a man?"

"So what is it you want from me, Taggert?"

Logan shrugged. "Nothing very big. I just want you to fill in the holes. There are bits I don't know. I don't like not having the whole picture. I want the truth. I'm gonna tell you a story. If I get it wrong, you correct me. Do we have a deal?"

"You let me escape?"

"Like I said. I'll leave the stall and stable unlocked."

"It's a setup."

"Maybe it is." Logan shrugged. "Maybe it ain't. It's the only chance you got. It's the only deal I'm making."

Hawkins looked at the door. He c.o.c.ked his head. He pulled himself up and leaned back against the wooden wall, arms crossed against his chest. He gave the matter little consideration. "Deal. Start talking."

"You tell Sarah that she and her family had been headed where you were headed, that you and she should marry. You convince her. She marries you, giving you her innocence, her parents' money, her entire future."

Hawkins smiled. "And what an innocence it was."

Logan sharpened the stick's pointy end. "You get her to agree that you should go to the Dakotas ahead of her, prepare the homestead, lay in the fields. Then after winter, you promise to return for her. She goes for it. Christ, she was an easy mark. Like a child, she was."

"You have no idea. Worked like a dream."

"You get to Yankton and head farther west, to the Spotted Tail Agency. One of the underagents there is hungry to make a name for himself. He needs money to make a bid to become a full agent. You convince him he can become a bigger power broker by handling the land claims than he could ever be with the responsibilities of an Indian agent."

Even in the moonlight, Logan could see the tension creep into Hawkins's face. "How am I doin' so far?"

"Keep going."

"Everything's going along just jim-dandy. Except you forget about Sarah. Winter ends. Spring is in full swing. She doesn't wait for you to come fetch her. She shows up at the homestead. Rotten luck, that. You give her the song and dance about working on a story about corruption at the agencies and having to use an alias to do that. You ask her to help prepare several fake claim papers you'll use in your investigation."

"She had elegant handwriting. A light hand. She could copy any writing style. A natural. But the b.i.t.c.h wouldn't do it."

"And she started asking questions, questions you didn't have answers for. You decided she was more of a liability than an a.s.set. By this point, you'd met Swift Elk. He had one thing you could usea"his hatred of whites. He'd do just about anything to get his hands on horses or guns. You gave him both, and an outlet for his blood vengeance. You sicced him on your wife."

Hawkins lifted a hand to his scalped head. His palm hovered over the raw, scarred skin with lesions that still opened and bled. "I wasn't supposed to be there. He was supposed to wait until I'd left. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"And you killed his brother. For that, he scalped you."

"I saw them raping her. Right there in the front yard. Little Miss Goody Two Shoes. They tore her clothes off and threw her over Swift Elk's pony. One of them came back and set the fire. I pretended to be dead. He shot an arrow into my side for good measure. But I got out. I got away. I hid in the trees. Don't know how long I was there. The cry that rose up when the neighbors came roused me. Christ, my head hurt."

His hand dropped to his side. "It wasn't supposed to go like that, but it worked to my advantage. I lived. I had a new disguise. No wife to worry about."

"There was just one problem. Your whole deal burned in the fire."

"Almost all of it. I got a fever from the wounds. I wandered off, mindless, lost. I came upon some men panning for gold. I was with them for weeks. When the fever left and I'd healed some, I remembered Sarah had come home that night with the hand cart. What was she doing with that? She said she'd been to a neighbor's. Only I didn't know which neighbor.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n her. I had to search three homes for the d.a.m.ned trunk. Never did find it. Thought it was gone. A year of work. Gone."

He lapsed into silence. When he didn't seem inclined to continue, Logan prompted him. "Then Sarah showed up at Fort Buford."

"Can you believe it? Who could survive a year with Swift Elk? I sent a man to watch her. He told me a trunk arrived there one day, and I knew she still had the papers."

"What about the warrant for forgery?"

"I had nothing to do with that."

"Come on. We were having such a nice discussion. You promised the truth."

"I had nothing to do with that."

"You think you're better at this game than I am?" Logan leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees, his knife in one hand, his sharp stick in the other. "You're running from the law. I don't give a good G.o.dd.a.m.n about the law. Killing you in a slow and painful way will give me joy to the end of my days."

"I told Petea"Pete Bedermana"that Sarah was back. He thought up the warrant."

"That it? That all of it, Hawkins?"

"That's it."

Logan nodded. He sheathed his knife. "Stand up."

"What for?"

"'Cause I'm gonna beat the s.h.i.t out of you now."

Hawkins scrambled to his feet. "That ain't fair. I did what you saida""

Logan dragged him forward and cut off his complaints with an upper cut to his jaw that sent him flying backward against the stall wall. Logan fingered the stick he'd been whittling, seriously contemplating ending the man's days right then.

"Logan. It's enough. I'll write the Yankton sheriff, tell him what happened. He may want Sarah to be a witness against Bederman. Let's get this statement written up. I'll have Hawkins sign it in the morninga"but he's got to be alive to do it."

Logan's shoulders dropped with a long exhalation. Sarah was free. Free. It was done. He walked out into the night while Declan locked the cell back up. Looking up at the brilliant stars, he drew a deep breath. Cool fresh air filled his lungs. He laughed, filled with the joy of his wife's freedom.

Declan drew even with him. Logan gave him back the key. He took it and clapped Logan on the shoulder. "I had my doubts. I was trying to keep an open mind. I've seen it go the other way around too many times. I'm happy for you, Logan. Christ, your woman has been through h.e.l.l. You'll have to get her divorced from Hawkins and redo your vows."

"Yep. But that's the easy part. She's safe now, Cal. You have no idea what that means to us."

Chapter 17.