Free Nan Ryan by Outlaws Kiss Page B

she would get them within reach.
    Mollie abruptly stopped fighting. She made herself go limp and then she said, as if excited, “Kiss me, Kid. Kiss me.”
    He raised his head and looked at her, an expression of confusion in his eyes. For what seemed an eternity he stared down at her, his big body pinning her, his bearded face looming directly above her own.
    “Mollie, darlin’,” he said and lowered his mouth to hers.
    Fighting her revulsion, Mollie allowed him to kiss her. Acting as though she liked it, she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back, sighing and moaning to convince him she was enjoying it. Believing that he had subdued her and she was now as aroused as he, the Kid let down his defenses. He rolled over onto his back, bringing Mollie with him.
    For a time they stayed like that, kissing, stroking. Then they rolled once more, moving closer and closer to the night table. Mollie was again on her back with the Kid atop her, his mouth ravaging hers, his eyes closed in building ecstasy. Hers were wide open, and her right hand was inching toward the table. When her fingertips touched the scissors, an unconscious gurgle of relief rose in her throat and surfaced. The Kid took it as a sigh of passion.
    Mollie snatched up the scissors and immediately raised them over the Kid’s broad back. At that second, he raised his head and looked at her with something close to tenderness in his eyes. She gave him one last chance.
    “Let me go,” she said. “Please. I don’t want this. I don’t want you.”
    “Why, you little bitch!” he snarled. “There’s no being good to you, is there? There’s only one thing you understand and that’s force. Well, if it’s rape you want, I’m your man.” His mouth came cruelly back down on hers while his hand went between them to unbutton his trousers.
    With a sigh of resignation, Mollie lifted the scissors high and, with all her strength, brought them down squarely into the middle of Jeff Battles’s broad back. It took a second for him to respond, to figure out what had happened.
    His face suddenly becoming a mask of shock and pain, he stiffened and collapsed atop her. Crying hysterically now, Mollie managed to roll him off her and scramble to her feet. Trembling and sobbing, she backed away, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wide with the horror of what she had done.
    Was he dead? Had she killed him? Should she run downstairs and ask for help? Go for a doctor? Notify the federales?
    Mollie hurriedly drew on a fresh chemise and blouse, buckled her gun belt around her hips, took her saddlebags and went directly to the Kid’s room. Working quickly, she shoved all the stolen loot into the fancy, blood-red leather saddlebags her papa had given her for her birthday. Gold coins and bars soon weighted down the saddlebags, and when Mollie hung them over her shoulder, she staggered under the weight of the fortune.
    She managed to make it down the stairs and out into the dusty street to her horse. It took all her strength to toss the loaded saddlebags over the mount’s back. Gasping for breath, she swung up into the saddle and fled.
    She had to get out of Mexico. She had a better chance against the authorities in the States than she did in Mexico against the Kid.
    Mollie kicked her mount into a gallop and headed north as her papa’s words came back to her. “If anything ever happens to me, promise me you’ll ride straight to Arizona and my old friend, Napier Dixon.”
    Lew Hatton didn’t hear the knock on the heavy carved door. A servant ushered the nighttime caller into Lew’s paneled study. Lew looked up from his desk to see an elegantly gowned woman standing in the shadows cast by the dying fire.
    “Mrs. Maxwell,” he acknowledged, but did not rise.
    “Elizabeth. Call me Elizabeth.”
    “What is it you want, Mrs. Maxwell?” came the deep, bored voice of the man lounging back in his chair with the buttons of his fine silk shirt open halfway down his dark