RosieSharpe
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- Votes 32
- Parts 22
Some fires don't burn out - they become you.
Jane was born in the dust of the Nebraska Territory, baptized in violence and raised beneath the boot of the God-fearing congregation. By the time she's a woman, she's no stranger to pain - or to running. Branded a criminal, hunted across the West, she trusts no one. Especially not men with law badges and silver tongues.
Until she meets him.
The sheriff is steady, haunted, too good for the territory that bred him. Without realising she is the outlaw that he's tracking, he offers her shelter during a storm - nothing more. But Jane has survived by reading men like maps, and she sees it in him: desire, reined in tight.
Jane stepped closer.
The sheriff's walls were plastered with her crimes - wanted posters, notes, crude sketches of her own face. And now Jane stood between them and the man hunting her.
He'd brought whiskey. She smiled. "Tryin' to get me drunk, Sheriff?"
His chuckle was slow. "Just bein' decent."
She moved closer, each step a gamble. If he saw the posters in the lamplight, he'd surely recognise her. No. She had to keep him looking at her. Only her.
A button slipped free.
The sheriff's jaw tightened. "You don't have to do that."
"I know," she said, and closed the last inch between them.
It began slow, a breath shared, a thread pulled taut - then it snapped.
His mouth met hers, rough and unrelenting. There was no tenderness, only heat. Her back hit the wall, her shirt slipped, and his hands roamed like fire.
She had used her body as a weapon before. But this was surrender, too - fury and need burning under her skin.
Outside, the storm battered the shutters. But the real storm was here.
And through it all, Jane kept her eyes on the wanted posters above the bed.
Her own face stared back.
Wanted: The Outlaw is a work of historical fiction that dangles religion, redemption, and extremely steamy romance on the end of the hangman's rope.