Tracker’s Sin by Sarah McCarty Read Free Book Online Page A

with
    himself for the weakness that had him hoping it was the latter.
    “It can be.”
    “And that’s your explanation?”
    She shrugged and gathered handfuls of her skirt with her fingers, gathering her composure as she did so. She was obviously humiliated.
    “I’m sorry I behaved oddly, and I’m sorry if it scared you.”
    The last was said in a rush. She turned on her heel and headed out the door.
    “I wasn’t scared,” he cal ed after her. Ari could leave him many ways, angry, happy, but not humiliated.
    Her footsteps stopped. There was a swish of skirts as she turned, and then the sound of her footsteps coming back. And damned if they
    didn’t sound angry. She stopped in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. He wondered if she would stil stand that way if she knew how
    uncertain it made her appear. Maybe she wouldn’t even care. Compared to crazy, uncertainty was quite a step up. “You weren’t?”
    “Nope.”
    “Why not?”
    “I could say because you were scared enough for the both of us.”
    Her eyelids lowered. At her left temple, a curl was working loose, he noted absently. “But you won’t.”
    It was an order. A rather intriguing one, considering how scared she’d been before.
    “No, I won’t.”
    “Then why weren’t you afraid?”
    He gave her the truth. “Because I’m one mean son of a bitch.”
    She didn’t blink at the curse or the declaration. “I see.”
    Did she? He doubted it. He waved her to the lone chair in the room. “So now that I’ve come clean, why don’t you?”
    “About what?”
    About how she’d ended up here. About how she’d kept her name. About how in a part of the state where lawlessness was rampant and
    blond women were money on the hoof, she existed peaceful y with only an old man for protection.
    “How about starting with how long you’ve been here.”
    “A little over a year. Ever since my husband was murdered.”
    Pretending nonchalance he didn’t feel, Tracker slid the tray off the dresser and onto his lap. There were beans, rice, scrambled eggs
    sausages and tortil as on the plate. He forked a bit of each into a tortil a. “You were there?”
    “Yes.”
    “What happened?”
    She licked her lips again, leaving them moist and shiny. They were redder and more swol en than before, as if she’d been chewing on
    them. They would look just like that after a man’s kiss. His kiss, Tracker admitted to himself. No matter that she wasn’t for him, he wanted Ari like hel on
    fire. Just another one of life’s little jokes.
    Straightening her skirt around her legs, Ari took one of those deep breaths he’d learned meant she was struggling for composure. The
    breath pressed her smal breasts up against the cotton of her bodice. It was too easy for Tracker to imagine what they’d look like naked. He wondered if
    her nipples would be pale or dark, or maybe as red as her lips. He liked the thought of them being red from his attentions.
    He mental y shook himself. He was little more than an animal. A woman like Ari would never look twice at a man like him, even before the
    events of the last two years. And after? Shit. She’d run like hel .
    His cock couldn’t care less what his brain said, however. It responded to her in a purely primitive manner, swel ing and stretching to life.
    Ari motioned to the tray in his lap. “Your food is getting cold.”
    “You avoiding my question?”
    “What if I am?”
    He took a chance that pretending disinterest would make her comfortable. “Then I’l rein in my curiosity and stop asking.”
    For a moment he wasn’t certain it would work. She crossed her ankles left over right. And then right over left. She licked her lips. Checked
    her bun. Sighed and then said, “I don’t know what happened.”
    “You don’t remember?”
    She shook her head and looked away. “I had a blow to my skul . I can’t remember anything before I opened my eyes and saw Vincente
    and Josefina looking down at me.”
    That was