Kissed by the Outlaw Read online

  He's spanking her! Oh, he's—he's spanking that woman!

  Kelly straightened up, afraid to be spotted. Then she couldn't help it. She peeked out again.

  "Third time this week, Sarah," the man was saying. "Third time I've had to spank this naughty backside of yours. Let's see if we have better luck with the switch than we did with the paddle…"

  Kelly winced as the stick came down at the same time the woman yelped. She could swear she felt it, too, as insane as that thought was. The switch left a red welt that had to have felt like her bottom was aflame.

  What was going on there? She studied the man's manner of dress as well as the woman's. Had she stumbled into some 1800s reenactment or something? Were these just mountain people who hadn't yet chosen to join the Twenty-First Century?

  "Oh, I said I'd be good!" The woman sounded like she was hiccoughing in between bawling.

  The man abruptly stopped smacking her backside with the switch. He set it down beside his chair and rested one hand flat on her blazing and swollen behind, his other arm wrapped firmly around her waist. He was talking to her, but his voice was low. Kelly strained to hear, able solely to catch snippets of what she guessed was a lecture.

  "Now, Sarah, I expected better of you… woman, if it takes me spanking you for you to learn… we're not done here yet…."

  What? Not done yet? Kelly swallowed hard. She'd barely caught her breath when the man proceeded with the spanking, this time peppering each of her bottom cheeks with smacks from his hand. The woman was a sobbing and bucking mess, trying in vain to get her already scorched rear out of the line of fire.

  Kelly tried to look away but couldn't. It was as if her feet were bolted in place and she couldn't budge. She stared on, the tip of her tongue darting out and moistening her lips.

  No. No, no, no, she told herself. You are not getting turned on by that. No way!

  What was this place? What was going on? Why were they dressed that way?

  Another question came at her from behind—and spoken in a deep, masculine voice.

  "What do you think you're doing?"

  Kelly cried out and turned on her heel, clutching Mimi tighter to her chest. She could actually hear her heartbeat in her ears as she stared up into the face of a tall, imposing man glaring back down at her. Clear blue eyes, like turquoise ice, commanded her gaze from under the brim of a black hat. He wore black pants and a brown, button-down vest over a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing muscular forearms.

  "Nothing! I'm—I'm lost!" she choked out the words. She was on the verge of tears.

  "Lost? What's a woman like you doing out here by yourself in the first place?" He sneered. "Besides trespassing. And not minding your own business."

  Though afraid, she took offense. "I'm not trespassing. I told you, I'm lost! But fine. I don't need your help!"

  She pushed past him. His look of surprise gave her a pitiful sliver of satisfaction.

  "Come on back here, woman!" the stranger bellowed after her.

  "Not on your life, cowboy!" She mumbled those words under her breath as she ran, still holding onto Mimi tightly. That was what he looked like, too. Come to think of it, so did the man turning that poor woman's bottom twenty shades of red.

  Cowboys. Those men were cowboys.

  Where am I, Kelly wondered.

  Seconds later, running wildly through the woods, she collided with a limb that she'd failed to see after glancing back at the man in black, who was pursuing her. She saw stars—or maybe it was those deceptive lights once again—before she fell to the ground in one unceremonious, and certainly unconscious, heap.

  Chapter Two

  "For a woman, she sure dresses funny," Sarah Colton remarked with her nose turned up.

  Jess McSwain tossed a long glance at the woman wrapped loosely in a blanket, lying in the back of his wagon. That funny-looking little dog of hers, with a pink bow secured to one of her ears was blissfully napping, curled up beside her owner.

  "Reckon I can't argue with that," he murmured breezily.

  "Foolish woman. Lucky she didn't kill herself, getting hit by that tree limb the way she did," Charles Colton added. "She was saying something about the cascade. 'The cascade, the lights,' she was hollerin'."

  Charles' wife shrugged. "Who knows? She's delirious. Or crazy. She's a busybody, that's for certain."

  Jess grinned knowingly, watching Sarah rub her tender backside before blushing and dropping her hand.

  "She's lost, I know that," he said. "And she's scared. I'll get her back to town. Let her see the doctor. Maybe there'll be somebody there who'll know who she is."

  He was getting onto the wagon seat when Charles came around to his left.

  "She was wet, so we must be right about her having been in that creek. I went back down there to see if there was anything else, and there was. There was this thing."

  Jess looked down at the strange, thin object in his friend's hand. Accepting it, he turned it over in his own hands, studying it.

  "What is that?" he asked.

  "Heck if I know. Never seen anything like that before."

  Whatever the thingamajig was, it was thin and light and fit into the palm of his hand. It looked to be tightly secured in some kind of holster encrusted with tiny, multicolored jewels. He accidentally touched something on it and saw words and numbers coming across what he assumed was its face.

  2:32. 44% charged. slide to unlock.

  "Slide to unlock…what?" Jess grumbled.

  "Huh. Didn't see that before." Charles tilted his head, fascinated. "Do it. See what it does."

  "I'm not doing it. Well, okay, maybe later." Tossing the strange object over his shoulder and somewhere into the back of the wagon, he took hold of the reins. "Sooner I get this young lady back to whomever she belongs to, the better."

  "A woman traveling out here by herself and dressed like a man…" His friend shook his head. "Yeah, I'd say take her back right quick. Women like that are bound to be trouble."

  Jess ignored the comment. "I'll see you sometime this month. You and Sarah take care of yourselves."

  He stopped short of calling the woman behind him "trouble." How many times in his life had the same label been slapped on him? True, more than enough times, people had been speaking the truth about him. That was over and done with as far as he was concerned, delegated to the past.

  Then again, that didn't hold true where some folks were concerned. To them, no matter what Jess McSwain did, nor matter how much he tried to distance himself from the man past, he could never erase the man he'd been or the things he'd done.

  He heard his live cargo stirring and groaning in the back and sighed. His hopes that it would be a quiet and uneventful ride to town were dashed at once. McSwain glanced over his shoulder and saw the woman sitting up with effort, touching a hand to her head.

  "Oh, no…." She sounded hoarse. "It wasn't a dream."

  "No, it wasn't. And you sure didn't get very far," he answered pleasantly. "All is not lost, though. You do have an escort into town. That'd be me."

  "Is that so? And who are you?" she demanded.

  "Jess McSwain. Mind telling me who you are?"

  "Kelly Long. Now that we've gotten those little formalities out of the way… where are we?"

  "Exactly where you were before you knocked yourself out cold. On Dayton Mountain."

  "Dayton Mountain?" Kelly leaned forward, shaking her head. "That's not the name of this mountain."

  "It is, ever since I've been here, ma'am. Dayton Mountain. Biggest mountain in this part of Wyoming."

  "What? What did you say?" She climbed into the front seat, nearly tumbling over the side—would have, too, if he hadn't caught her by the arm.

  "Are you crazy, woman?" Jess cried, pulling hard on the reins, bringing the horse to a stop. "Don't do that again! You hear?"

  The woman blinked hard and recoiled. For a moment, she looked as if she were about to cry. Then she recovered, with fire in her brown eyes. "You do
n't have to be such a bear about it, McSwain!"

  He narrowed his eyes at her. "And I could let you just fall off this wagon and break your neck, since you're not too concerned about your own safety. I shouldn't be surprised about that, though. You're a woman out here, alone in the woods."

  "It's called 'hiking.'"

  "What is?"

  She huffed impatiently. "Walking around out here in these woods."

  "Really, now? I call it foolishness. You could get yourself killed out here. This mountain is no place for a woman alone. And can you shut that little critter up?"

  Kelly hurriedly picked Mimi up and stroked her fur, comforting her. "I have every right to be out here, if that's what I want." She set her jaw stubbornly.

  "Not while you're in my care, you don't."

  "Oh, no? What are you gonna do about it? Spank me like that man was spanking that woman out there?"

  Jess McSwain didn't stop the wagon that time, but he did turn a cold, stern stare at her. Kelly tried not to show fear, lifting her chin defiantly.

  "I'll leave that task to your husband," he said evenly, "once you two are reunited."

  "I don't have a husband. Not anymore."

  "Hmph! Then I advise you, Madam, that you would do well not to tempt me."

  "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "That means that if you were my wife, out here in the woods by yourself, you'd be too sore to sit after the sound spanking you'd get over my knee. No more hiking for you."

  Kelly coughed out a cry of disapproval but promptly sat forward and stared ahead, refusing to even look at him.

  She didn't know Jess McSwain from beans, yet she had no doubt he was a man capable of carrying out his threat. Maybe it was the power of suggestion, but her bottom cheeks contracted uncomfortably at the thought of him taking one of those evil-looking switches to her tender flesh.

  He wasn't a bad-looking man, either. She guessed that he was younger than he looked, probably in his mid-forties, making him slightly older than her. Those blue eyes shone under that hat brim and complemented the chiseled features of his face. There was stubble on his upper lips, cheeks and chin that matched his dark brown hair, through which were premature strands of silver.

  "There's something back there. Might be yours," he spoke up after a few minutes. "Well… got to be yours, I think."

  Pushing aside the blankets, Kelly reached for her cell.

  "My phone! Yes!" she exclaimed.

  "What is it?"

  "My phone. What did you think it was, McSwain?"

  Jess shrugged. Looking offended, he turned his head and continued driving.

  "You—you do know what a cell phone is, don't you?"

  To his credit, he didn't respond belligerently. His curiosity was piqued. "No. What is it?"

  His manner of dress… the fact that he was driving a horse-drawn wagon rather than a pickup truck… the matter of him never having heard the word 'phone' before. Kelly felt her panic rising again, barely tamping down on it. "McSwain, you said we're in Wyoming."

  "That's right. Close to Cheyenne, Wyoming."

  Her stomach tossed uncomfortably. "What day is this?"

  "The date?" Frowning, he looked as if he were trying to figure out if she was teasing him or not. "It's Thursday, the third of August, 1871."

  Kelly looked away, nodding stiffly. "1871… oh, no."

  "Something wrong, Kelly?"

  He had used her name for the first time. She was too distracted right then to notice her reaction to hearing how it sounded spoken by that gruff but admittedly sexy male voice.

  "When I started out this day, it was November," she told him. "And the year was 2014. The mountain was in North Carolina."

  McSwain didn't answer right away. He bit the corner of his lip pensively, staring straight ahead of them.

  She's crazy, he decided. She had to be. Kelly Long seemed too convinced of what she was saying to be lying. There was the matter, too, of the odd clothing she was wearing, and that small contraption she'd called a "cell." Or was it a phone? She'd used both words to describe it.

  What if she wasn't crazy? What if she really had come from 2014 North Carolina?

  Besides being of questionable sanity, and prickly, to boot, she was also pretty. A very pretty, highly attractive woman. Mature in age, if not in behavior. He couldn't deny he found it hard to keep his eyes off her. Yet those days for him were over. Starting his life over at forty-five, a woman was indeed the very last thing he needed. Perhaps in his younger days he would have considered it, but not now.

  Especially not with a woman like Kelly Long. This high-strung beauty supposedly from the future.

  "You got any idea how far North Carolina is from here?" He asked the question more to break the awkward silence between them.

  "Exactly. That's what I mean." Kelly turned in her seat to face him. "How does this happen? I mean, one minute I'm hiking on West Mountain. The next I'm checking out a cascade and falling into the cave behind it, just falling, falling, falling."

  "Um… checking out?" McSwain scowled at her. "How do you do that?"

  Kelly sighed in frustration. She didn't want to insult him. If anything, as scruffy and stern as he was, he was putting out an effort to understand her. That didn't change the fact, however, that she was becoming more and more distressed.

  "I was walking up the mountain, but I got off the trail and went to look at it. Oh—well, now. I got off the trail to get a picture of the deer, and—oh, yes! There were the lights!" She was beginning to remember. "McSwain, where are you taking me?"

  "To town. I'm hoping somebody there will know who you are."

  "No one there will know me. Can you forget about going to town?"

  "Well, I think maybe you should see Dr. Fairlane. You did hit your head pretty hard on that tree limb—"

  "Oh, yeah, don't worry about that," she insisted and rubbed her head. "I'm fine, really. Just fine."

  "Hmmm. Let's let the doctor decide that, all right?"

  She held back the urge to scream. Why did he have to be so stubborn? "I'd rather you take me back to the cascade."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "C'mon, McSwain! Work with me here! The cascade. The waterfall…" Kelly forced a smile. "If I can get back to the waterfall and—and I fall back into the water, maybe it's—it's like a portal or something. And I can get back to North Carolina and out of your hair. Okay?"

  McSwain moaned and rubbed his face. She was dizzying him with all her talk. "How do you know that'll work?"

  "I don't know. But, hey, it works on The Twilight Zone, so it's worth a shot!" She could hear the desperation in her tone of voice. "Take me there, please."

  "Kelly, take you where?"

  "To the waterfall!" she shouted.

  He raised his voice right back at her. "I already told you, woman! I don't know of any waterfall around here!"

  Angrily, she tossed her head. "Well, then you stop this wagon and let me off right now. If you can't help me, I'll find the waterfall myself."

  "I ain't letting you off here in the middle of the woods. I've gotta get some supplies in town, and I'm not leaving you alone in these woods."

  "You stop this wagon or I swear I'll jump right off it!"

  Fine! She wants off so badly, let her get off!

  McSwain fought the temptation. He had done a lot of bad things in his day, things he certainly wasn't proud of. Things that had sent him to prison. But none of those things included abandoning a woman in the woods, where wild animals or outlaws could get at her.

  Even a crazy, hardheaded woman deserved to be protected. Kelly Long's problem was, ironically, that she needed protection from her own foolishness.

  "Young lady, you'd better not jump off the wagon," he warned, his voice low.

  "Oh, no? You just watch me!"

  McSwain bit back a cuss word as he watched her twist around in her seat with that little dog in her arms. She was going to do it—she fully intended to jump off
that wagon and probably over the side of that hill, possibly killing herself, or at the very least injuring herself seriously. Of all the crazy, foolhardy, obstinate things to do!

  "Whoa!" He pulled hard on the reins.

  "Oh? So you see it my way? Finally!" she spat the words at him. "What—what are you doing?"

  He had clamped his hands on her waist and tugged her closer to him. Not an easy feat, hopping off the wagon while yanking her off with him. He was afraid to come around the front and pull her down, just in case she decided to trample him with his own wagon.

  "What are you doing? You—let me go!"

  She sounded scared now. Good. He hated to admit it, but he preferred it to her crazy shouts and threats.

  To top it off, her little dog had tumbled out of her arms and was yapping away furiously at the big, bad man hauling her master towards a large rock.

  "You hush up!" he commanded the dog. "And as for you, Miss Long…." It only took McSwain a moment to size up the rock visually. Knowing he could sit on it and keep a good grip on his reluctant passenger, he set her over his lap and anchored her in place with an arm fastened around her waist. With her feet dangling inches above the ground, she squirmed over his knee, but to no avail.

  "Oh—no! Don't you dare do this, McSwain! You can't do this to me!" she wailed. She tossed her arm back, laying it across her backside protectively. "Don't you dare! I'm too old to be spanked!"

  For her own safety, McSwain clasped her hand to her waist so that he wouldn't accidentally strike it. His gaze lingered—longer than was decent for it to do so—on the shapely bottom before him. Those were some tight britches. Tightest britches he'd ever seen stretched across a woman's behind. A man could think about other things besides taking a woman to task with a backside that tantalizing in view, and he was no exception.

  "If you're not too old to know better than to jump off a moving wagon, then you're not too old to spank," he lectured. "Now when I'm done blistering your tail, you'll sit and behave yourself 'til we get into town. And I don't want to hear another peep out of you, Miss. Understood?"