Page 13 of Runaway Hucow

“You could take me there,” Tess said hopefully.

“No.”

Tess’s heart sank a little. “Then… where will you take me?”

“To the cottage where I live with my two brothers,” Spike said. “It’s here in Colorado. We’ll be able to reach it by tomorrow.”

Tess didn’t know what to think about that. She had to admit, she liked how safe the bisonman made her feel, but she still hardly knew him, and she didn’t know his brothers at all. The thought of living with three big bison minotaurs was more than a little intimidating.

She dropped her eyes to the floor of the cave, but a moment later one of Spike’s fingers was beneath her chin, gently tilting her face up again. Her gaze met the bisonman’s dark eyes, and something like a spark of electricity shot through her body. Only this spark didn’t hurt the way the cattle prod did. It felt good. Maybe too good.

“Listen,” Spike said. “I’ll make you a deal. You come live with me and my brothers for a fortnight. After that, if you decide you don’t like it there, we’ll see to it you get to Duffy Ranch. I promise you that. What do you say, ma’am?”

What could Tess say besides yes? She knew Spike was right, there was no way she could ever reach Lamentation on her own, and she was pretty sure the bisonman wouldn’t let her anyway.

“Okay, but… why a fortnight? Why fourteen days?”

The minotaur gave another little smirk. It made his face look way, way too handsome for Tess’s liking. “There’s a good reason, ma’am, but I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you. Better if you just see it for yourself.”

CHAPTER 8

Spike woke with a smile on his face. A big one. He’d been dreaming about his little hucow, Tess. The type of dream a gentleman had no business dreaming. Then again, even a gentleman couldn’t control where his mind went while he was sleeping, and besides, Spike wasn’t really a gentleman. He wasn’t a man at all. He was a minotaur, and sometimes minotaurs got urges that were difficult to control.

His smile disappeared as soon as he opened his eyes.

The situation inside the cave was much as he’d left it a few hours before, when he’d finally allowed himself to catch a few hours of sleep. The fire had burnt itself down to embers, and the air was laced with the pleasing aroma of charred wood and smoke. The horses were still standing where he’d left them by the wall of the cave, sleeping on their feet. On the other side of the smoldering remains of the fire, his buffalo hide cloak was spread out on the stony floor, right where he’d placed it for Tess to lie on.

However, one very important thing was missing…

The hucow!

Heart slamming, Spike shoved himself up, and he felt a sudden stab of pain in his left arm. The wound where the bullet had grazed him. He spared half a second to make sure the stitches were still holding together—they were—then he thrust himself up onto his hooves and started to move.

His cock was still hard from the dreams he’d been having, and it ached terribly as it squeezed against the fabric of his britches, but he ignored the pain. The pain didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding the hucow.

Spike was usually a light sleeper. He should have heard her leave.

But those damned dreams…

Spike stepped over the fire and picked up the empty buffalo hide cloak. His older brother Roscoe hated that cloak. He considered it disrespectful to their species. But the bison to whom the skin had once belonged had been killed long before either Spike or Roscoe had even been born, shot down by some long dead Ute hunter who wanted to provide food and warmth for his family. Maybe that hunter’s great-grandchildren were still out there somewhere, roaming around the prairie. Or maybe not. Either way, Spike saw no reason not to use the cloak. To his mind, letting it go to waste would have been an even greater disrespect to the buffalo who had given its life to make it.

He lifted the cloak to his face and inhaled deeply. The hucow’s scent was all over the fur. An odor of bare skin, sweat, and warm, sweet milk.

And something else. Something unmistakable to Spike’s animal instincts.

The scent of arousal.

His cock throbbed in response, and his balls screamed with the desire for release, but his protective instincts overrode those more basal urges.

He needed to find the hucow. If anything had happened to her, anything at all, he would never be able to forgive himself.

Spike rushed across the cave to where his gun stood propped against the wall. It only took him a fraction of a second, but in that time he was able to mentally take stock of the situation. If someone had snuck inside the cave and stolen Tess, they would have taken the horses too.

And they would have put a bullet in his head while he was sleeping.

So it wasn’t a kidnapping.

Still, he wasn’t going to take any chances. Not when the hucow’s life was at stake. He snatched his gun off the wall and broke open the breech to make sure it was loaded. It was. A pair of big, fat 4 gauge shotgun shells.