Uncommon Cowboys: Vol 2 PRINT

Excerpt From: Wounded Cowboy

Luka was dying. Pain radiated from his back. Slow tears trickled down his face and dropped into the patches of snow underneath him.

At least he was alone here. Sometimes when the nightmares came, more and more often, he thought he was back with them.

Whimpering, he curled into the foetal position. The wound on his back pulled and oozed more blood. He hugged himself like he had done so many nights.

He needed someone.

He should be hungry. He hadn't been strong enough to hunt for some time. But his belly was sunken, just another tight pain like the rest of him.

He groped for his knapsack, the only thing he’d been able to salvage when he’d abandoned the old blue truck. He had to sit up to squint at his journal in the harsh light, flipping through pages, his fingers cramped and swollen. As much as he needed to express himself, he didn’t think he could manage it anymore.

Pages and pages of drawings, all of him, Luka’s dream man, his healer.

He’d started dreaming about his healer when he'd been a captive. He remembered the first time he’d tried to draw him his fingers had been crusted with his own blood, but when he managed a part of the man’s face, scratched into a cedar wall, he’d forgotten his swollen lip, his broken ribs.

He’d stared at the man in the light of the single candle he saved for special occasions, feeling something... He wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t pain, though it made his chest ache.

Now looking at that face he could lie down again, feeling familiar peace. He only had a pencil, so he couldn’t fill in colours, but Luka knew his vision had grey eyes with squint lines at the corners and had rugged features, bronzed by the elements. His hair was brown and shaggy with threads of white at the temples. He had big hands, gentle hands, healing hands. Sometimes when Luka was really sore, when just turning over made him whimper from pain, Luka would picture those caring hands on him.

He'd never experience that. The late April snows had taken him by surprise, and he had no camping gear, not after the way he’d escaped. When he'd been hungry, he'd roamed as the wolf, finding game. More and more he'd spent time as the wolf but a bullet wound from a hunter’s rifle had creased his back and the pain had fractured his ability to change.

Now he lay naked and shivering under the canopy of a pine tree, its boughs weighed heavy by the last snow of winter. The wind cut under the branches, ice pellets striking his exposed flesh.

Dempsy had told Luka over and over again he was barely worth keeping alive. He knew he had only one use. He squeezed his eyes shut as he remembered what that was. Dempsy’s rough hands on him, his breath hot against the back of Luka’s neck as he—

No. He was going to die out here, he knew that, but he was going to die a free wolf. He wouldn’t think of the pit anymore, of watching his father and brothers and cousins go down.

It wasn’t so bad anymore. He was getting warmer, as if something kind had touched him when he surrendered. He didn’t have to fight anymore, or hide, or be afraid.

* * * *

Charlie Danvers shook his snowshoe, trying to free some of the ice that encrusted it so he could continue his solitary tramp through the still, crystalline forest. Here nothing was between him and his maker, as his pa used to say.

He smiled. He missed the old man though he’d been gone since Charlie was twenty, fifteen years ago. Now he had no one to share the work with, the small triumphs, the crushing sadness when he failed to save one of his rescue animals. His grandfather had founded a small nature reserve on Danvers Peak way back when most people didn’t think this land was good for anything but cattle and logging. Charlie strove to protect the slice of pristine wilderness.

It was lonely work. When the sole cowboy working his land had passed away from a heart attack two years ago, Charlie had been left badly short-handed. Since then he’d made do with the help of volunteers. He knew he had to hire someone on, but the work required a special affinity for the wild.

He sucked in a breath that felt like cold fire deep in his chest. Directly ahead of him was a foot, sticking out from underneath the shelter of a pine. What the hell?

Excerpt From: A Plain, Ordinary Cowboy

"What the fuck, what’s that little bitch doin’ here?"

Deputy Micah Danvers’ enhanced senses caught the menacing whisper through the friendly chatter in White Deer’s June town hall craft fair. He zeroed in on two young cowboys, Deke Masters and Jared Marks, obviously liquored up and ready to rumble. Oh yeah, he’d had a run-in with them shortly after he’d come to town. Definitely troublemakers. Despite knowing he could handle them, Micah’s gut tightened.

He purely hated dealing with mobs. They brought back bad memories.

Someone bumped into him. His hands fisted.

"Hey, sorry, Deputy Danvers," Juan, a young kid who lived with his mother above the town bakery, murmured before running over to his friends.

"Sorry," Micah answered softly, even knowing the kid wouldn’t hear him. His face reddened at the slip. He forced himself to relax.

His attention returned to the two cowboys, trying to see what they were up to. The crowd shifted, so Micah saw the men were glaring at a pretty young woman with long black hair and golden skin sitting at one of the craft tables. She smiled as she held up a handful of twigs, demonstrating something to the folks in front of her table.

Micah frowned. Whoever she was, she was a stranger and he didn’t like strangers.

Micah ate the same cereal for breakfast every morning. He always bought the same blue and brown shirts. He picked up plain white briefs. He liked everything the same and he liked knowing who was in town.

He closed his eyes, trying to catch her scent. Citrus. She was wearing something like grapefruit.

Micah tilted his head, not sure he liked it. It was...different. Kind of abrasive, but also strong, fresh.

His cock hardened.

And whoa, what the fuck was that?

Survival instinct kicked in, warning him to stay far, far away from the new woman in town. Something about her smelt...forbidden.

Micah was frowning when Mary Watson rejoined him, squeezing his arm as if to ask him what was up. He looked at her and felt vaguely embarrassed, as if he’d been caught.

Keep it low key, asshole, he told himself when his gut clenched again. Don’t stand out.

Mary worked as a secretary at the little town hall, so Micah saw her often. They’d become good friends. He liked her straightforward grey eyes and warm smile as well as the long brown hair that fell to her waist.

"Did you find that gelding you were interested in looking at again?" he asked her.

Mary nodded. "Be a good horse for your stable, cowboy," she said, arching an eyebrow at him.

"Huh, don’t think so. My barn is almost as much a ruin as the cabin," Micah said. "And my roof leaks. Gotta fix that first."

"He’s a beauty, Mike," Mary said, using the nickname she and some of the townspeople now occasionally used. In all the towns where he’d lived, Micah had never had a nickname before and somehow that made White Deer home even if it was dangerously close to the village where he’d grown up...and fled.