Wild Is My Heart Read Free

immediately that the youthful bandit was a woman. Those huge violet eyes fringed with long, thick lashes should have been a dead giveaway. He had let some whoring bitch make a damn fool of him. “Colt” Colter, a man feared for his swift trigger finger and quick temper, had been tricked by a female barely out of her teens, by the look of her.
    Suddenly the sight of blood gushing from the gaping wound jolted Colt into action. She was alive—and, strangely, he didn’t want this woman to die. For some unaccountable reason her courage and daring intrigued him. Ripping the kerchief from her face, he opened her shirt and pressed the kerchief to the wound just inches above her left breast. Any lower and she would be dead now. A low moan escaped her lips as he stood above her, studying her delicate features.
    Sam opened her eyes to find a dark figure standing silhouetted against the storm-lit sky, his stetson pulled low on his forehead. His shirt was unbuttoned down his dark chest, and his tight buckskin trousers molded thickly muscled thighs. One word escaped her parched lips as he bent to lift her from the wet ground. “Will?”
    “I don’t know who Will is, lady, unless he’s your pardner,” Colt ground out. “But you’re both in a heap of trouble.”
    “Wh…where are you taking me?” she asked shakily.
    “I don’t know. How far to Karlsburg?”
    “Ten miles.” The way she said it made it seem like hundreds, so weak was her voice. Colt doubted she’d withstand the long ride to town, bleeding as she was.
    “Then we’d best get goin’. You need a doctor. Pronto.” She gasped in agony and paled when he swung her into his arms.
    “Take me home,” Sam begged, her violet eyes hazy with pain. “Please take me home.” Large tears rolled down her cheeks.
    “Jail is the only place you’re goin’, lady,” Colt insisted, deliberately hardening his heart. He had knocked around too long to be moved by a woman’s tears. Yet the suffering of this woman touched him in a way he’d never thought possible. Was he getting soft in his old age?
    “Not jail,” Sam gasped, shuddering at the thought. How strange, she reflected dazedly, but when she’d planned this holdup she’d never considered that either she or Will might end up hurt—or in jail.
    “Christ! If you don’t get help soon, lady, you’ll bleed to death and then it won’t matter where I take you,” Colt muttered.
    “Home,” Sam repeated weakly, slowly slipping into a world of darkness.
    “Where is home?” Colt heard himself asking. What in the hell had gotten into him? he chided himself, allowing a woman to interfere with his job. Captain Ford’s orders were to get the Crowder gang out of Karlsburg, not to cater to the whims of an outlaw. Yet he wasn’t entirely convinced this woman was a part of the gang he’d been sent to investigate. Perhaps this holdup was an isolated incident having nothing to do with the Crowders. He certainly intended to find out But regardless, the girl and her accomplice belonged behind bars, and it was his job to see that they got there.
    “Five miles due west,” Sam faltered, mustering the remnants of her strength. “Circle H Ranch … on … on the creek. Please take …”
    Whatever she started to say died in her throat as her head lolled sideways onto Colt’s broad chest. Spitting out a stream of expletives, Colt lifted her atop Thunder while he carefully mounted behind her. If they were but five miles from her home, her horse would eventually make its own way back. Setting Thunder in a westerly direction, Colt concentrated on the wounded woman in his arms, alarmed by the copious amount of blood seeping through the makeshift bandage he had applied. She’d be damn lucky to reach home alive, he thought, kneeing Thunder into a faster gait.
    Reaching behind him, Colt retrieved his raingear and spread it over him and the girl, who had begun to shiver from shock and exposure. “I don’t know why you did this,