- -
- 100%
- +
“I’m a cautious man.”
“Not that I have heard.”
He shifted in the saddle, enough so she got a glimpse of his profile. It was as uncompromisingly handsome as the rest of his face, and just as compelling. Especially with the hint of a grin denting the corner of his mouth.
“And you believe everything you’ve heard?”
After watching him defeat the bandits of the last town and boldly step in front of a barrage of bullets to save her life? “Yes.”
The dent grew into a crease. He slowed his horse until she pulled alongside, and turned to face her. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
She pushed the hat brim off her face. He had a gorgeous smile—even white teeth and finely shaped lips. There probably was not a woman he had ever asked to his bed who had turned him down. She wondered if they had noticed how rarely his smile reached his eyes. “Where exactly do we go?”
He ran those eyes over her in a slow perusal, making her vividly aware of the fact that she was still braced on the pommel and also of her promise not to slow him down. “Getting a bit saddle sore?”
“Not at all.”
It was probably the biggest lie of her life. She would have much to confess to her priest when she returned home.
Sam tipped his hat back the smallest bit. The sun reflected off his face, turning the deeper flecks in his eyes to shards of blue fire. For all that he sat relaxed in the saddle, he radiated an energy that crackled. Or maybe it was just her awareness of him that gave the impression of sizzle. She’d never met a man who made her so conscious of the weight of her breasts, the softness between her thighs, the very unique differences of male and female.
“Good to know. I was hoping to get another three hours in.”
Three hours? Her thighs would be raw meat by then.
“It’ll be dark in the next half hour.”
He pointed to the left. “The moon ought to give us enough light to travel by.”
She hadn’t noticed the half-moon rising. She tried again. “What about dinner?”
He reached behind him, flipped open the saddlebag and pulled out a cloth-wrapped parcel. “Here.”
She had to let go of the pommel to take it. Try as she might to hide it, she knew he saw her wince as her thighs took her weight. “Gracias.”
She unwrapped the cloth. Inside were two biscuits and four strips of jerky. Not a whole lot of food. Her stomach growled. She had not eaten since this morning, and not that much then. Fish was not her favorite. Sam reached over and took Sweet Pea’s reins. With a flick of his wrist he tossed them over the horse’s head.
“I’ll lead Sweet Pea here while you eat.”
Sweet Pea jerked away from the flip of the reins. The food tottered in her hand. Dinner almost fell in the dirt. “Be careful!”
“I’m always careful.”
She took a piece of jerky before wrapping up the rest of the food. “This I do not believe.”
“Why not?”
She cocked her head to the side. How much to tell? “I think you do not care much if you live or die, so you do crazy things.”
He blinked and his smile slipped. “That’s what you think?”
“Sí.”
“You think too much.”
It was either think too much or moan over the condition of her thighs. “For this you should be grateful.”
“What makes you say that?”
“If I did not think, I would have nothing to take my mind off the town we are passing. Thinking of the town would make me think of hotels and soft mattresses. Thinking of the mattress left behind would make me realize how unhappy I am. Being unhappy makes me sad. Being sad…”
He held up his hand. “Go ahead. Think.”
“Thank you.” She smiled and took a bite of the jerky. There was kindness in him.
He waited for her to start chewing before he asked, “Are you settled? Can we head on now?”
Good manners dictated she not talk until she was finished eating. If she followed good manners, they would still be standing here tomorrow night. The jerky was very tough. The only option was a nod.
“Let’s move, then.”
She couldn’t stop her groan as the horse took the first step. Sam glanced over his shoulder. “When you were evading the Tejala gang the last six months, you didn’t spend a lot of time on horseback, did you?”
“No.” She took another bite of the jerky. It was salty, and flavored with a spice she didn’t recognize, but to an empty stomach it was very good.
“Where did you hide?”
“In a cave.”
“What drove you out of hiding?”
“Men found the cave.” Vile men with rape on their minds.
“Tejala’s.”
“No. Others.”
“That must have been a bitch.”
“It was not my best day.”
With a cluck of his tongue, Sam urged Sweet Pea to pick up the pace. The horse immediately complied. Isabella had noticed that always happened. Animals liked Sam. Truth was, so did she. Sometimes for reasons she could define and others for reasons she did not understand but which were more compelling than the ones she did. She took another bite of jerky. He was a very interesting man.
“Where do we go?”
He pointed toward the setting sun.
“Another town?”
“No.”
She chewed some more and tried again. “A place that at least has a tub?”
She held the jerky in her mouth while she waited for the answer.
“No, but there’s a pond.”
She swallowed the jerky. “That will do.”
Another tug on the reins had Sweet Pea catching up. “You’re looking forward to a bath?”
“Are you not?”
The side of his mouth she could see tipped up in a familiar smile. “Are you hinting I’m getting a bit ripe?”
“I would not suggest such a thing to a man.”
“You just plan on suffering in silence?”
She opened the napkin and broke off a piece of biscuit. “I am rarely silent, especially when I suffer.”
If she thought his smile was handsome before, it was nothing compared to how handsome it was when emotion filled it.
It took her a moment to remember to breathe.
He tugged his hat down, covering his eyes, leaving only his mouth to focus on. It was a very expressive mouth, given to nuance rather than exaggeration. And right now he was amused. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
With a cluck of his tongue he went ahead, leaving her with a strange tingle in her stomach and a heat that infused her skin with a radiant sensitivity. What was it about this man? Why did he have such an effect on her? There were many handsome men on the Montoya ranch. Many men who walked with grace, fought with power, faced death with courage. Men who had a dangerous edge, but none of them had what Sam had. None of them had his bold masculine appeal that sank beneath her skin like liquid lightning. He could have any woman he wanted, be anywhere he wanted to be. But he was here. With her. That had to mean something. And if it didn’t, there had to be a way for her to make it into something. Something good.
The first time she’d seen him coming up the rise, she’d been praying, asking God to send her a solution to her problem. Folding the rest of the biscuit into the napkin to keep it from crumbling, she wondered—did that make Sam the answer to her prayer?
She bit off more jerky, chewing contemplatively. It was a strange idea, but it had also been a strange prayer. Besides, what was the point of praying if one was not going to believe that occasionally a prayer would be answered?
Even if the timing of Sam’s arrival was coincidence and not divine intervention—she was aware she might be convincing herself because she wanted it to be so—Sam was still a solution to her problem that she could easily live with. She did not kid herself that Sam was a forever man, but he was a man who could probably provide the happiness it was rumored a woman could experience in bed. He would not worry about her modesty, about offending her. About right or wrong. He would merely take what he wanted, give her what she needed. No more, no less. Exactly what she had prayed for. This could work.
Tejala wanted her as a virgin sacrifice to his power. Proof to the people of his town that he was invincible. That they owed him for their existence, and his benevolence could be counted on only as long as they submitted to his will. That’s why he hadn’t taken her by force. He’d left her lying in the dirt, vowing that before he would marry her she would crawl to him begging for the honor to be his wife—the honor she’d rejected. First he would take her pride, then he would take her home and lastly he would take her life. If she let him.
She did not feel like letting him.
Studying Sam, taking in his naturally aggressive posture, his broad shoulders that narrowed to his lean hips, the revolver that rode his hip, she saw a man designed to give Tejala headaches. Tejala would never accept being second to this man, just as she would never accept Tejala as her first man. She might not be able to win their war, but on the subject of whom she gave her virginity to, that battle she could win.
Sam was a warrior like Tejala, but with a difference. Tejala made her skin crawl, but Sam made her want to crawl under his skin. Where she’d be safe. Maybe that was the difference. She took another bite of dry biscuit. Her father had always told her that when she met a man who made her feel safe, who made her heart race, one others held in respect, then she would be looking at the man God had made for her. She grimaced. As a child she had believed him. As an adult she knew things were more complicated.
Her father had been a romantic. A good man, but impractical in some ways. Still, there was merit in his words about looking for a lover. Much more than in the advice her mother had handed out.
Her mother was the opposite of her father—practical to the core. Isabella had always thought her mother had very little respect for her father. Their marriage had been arranged. A good marriage producing a contract that joined property boundaries. She did not think her mother had ever forgiven her father for being caught up in the excitement and romance of making his fortune, for leaving Spain and coming to the territory. Her mother would have been content being the wife of a third son of a respectable family. She was not content being the wife of the only aristocrat in the new land.
That dissatisfaction drove her to want more for Isabella. In her mother’s eyes, Isabella needed to return to Spain to find a husband. Short of that, she needed to marry Tejala and secure the family’s future in the land to which her father had chosen to bring them. Her mother was a great believer in exploiting the rules of the society in which she found herself. So was Isabella. Just not in the same way.
Her parents’ different views had torn their family apart, forced Isabella to flee, killed her father. She closed her eyes against that memory, everything going black around her, leaving only the sound of her father calling her name, Tejala’s laugh, a spray of blood hitting paper, an awful gurgle and then nothing. No more pain, no more dreams. Nothing except flight and the knowledge that each day might be the day Tejala found the way to force her to crawl. As if she would ever crawl to that son of a dog.
“If you don’t ease up that grip, your dinner is gonna be crumbs.”
Isabella looked down. She was holding the napkin so tightly the contents squeezed out between her fingers. “I am sorry.”
She pulled the corner of the napkin back. One of the biscuits had survived pretty much intact. The jerky was invulnerable to the assault. She urged Sweet Pea closer to Breeze, gritting her teeth against the agony in her thighs. Holding out the food, she offered the intact biscuit. “This one did not suffer too much.”
Those too-observant eyes of his touched on her face. She had not looked in a mirror lately, but she knew from how her face felt when she washed in the streams that she’d lost the plumpness in her cheeks. Her father would be horrified. She was unconcerned with that, but she wished she would lose a bit of the plumpness in her chest. The binding that kept her more-than-ample breasts from bouncing painfully was hot. And it made her break out in an irritation rash if she had to exert herself. As she had had to the past two days. Just thinking about the rash made her think of the itch, which immediately became in dire need of scratching. Of course, with Sam watching her so closely, she could not scratch a thing. She held out the biscuit. “You must hunger.”
His blue eyes went dark. His nostrils flared and his gaze traveled her figure. “I can wait.”
Her breath caught. He was not talking food, but because she could not think how to answer, she kept on with the pretense. “It is not possible I can eat all this.”
Sweet Pea stepped in a hole, jerking her thighs along the rough edge of the saddle. The pain was too much. Dropping the packet of food, she grabbed the pommel, a groan grating past her lips. Kell made short work of her dinner. A blur of gray, a snap of teeth and it was gone.
Strong hands cupped her waist. She squealed as Sweet Pea sidestepped, and suddenly she was falling. But only for a second. Then she was lifted and her rear connected with Sam’s hard thighs. His arm came around her stomach, securing her in place. Her hat fell back off her head, getting caught between his shoulder and her back. The string dug in like a noose around her neck. She grabbed for it, kicking with her feet, wrenching at the tie.
Sam’s hands replaced hers, working between the string and her neck. “Easy, now.”
She could not breathe. Harsh noises clogged her throat, struggling to get free. He was choking her. She clawed at his hands.
“Isabella!”
The call for attention slipped under her panic, giving her something to hold on to. She opened her eyes. Sam’s face was inches away. Sam. Not Tejala. His hand was on her shoulder. He was talking to her.
“The string’s gone. You can breathe, Isabella. Just open your mouth and suck in some of this nice cool evening air.”
He made it sound so simple. Just breathe in and out. No big deal for most people. But she had a horror of being choked. It came at the strangest times. And ususally in front of people she would prefer didn’t know. Like now. With Sam.
His thumb brushed her jaw. “Now, Isabella.”
She held his gaze and tried. The obstruction in her throat cleared. She took one breath, and then two. The night air was sweet. Then again, any air was sweet after choking almost to death. She touched her neck, tucked her fingers under the lax string of the hat and yanked it over her head.
“Yeah, I think we can do without that for a bit.” Sam took the hat and hooked it over the saddle horn. His fingertips replaced hers at her throat. Just the tips, tracing the spot where the sensation of a noose lingered. As if he knew. She went breathless again. He moved his hand to her shoulder, just under the collar of her shirt. For no reason she could discern, she apologized. “I’m sorry. I do not like my throat touched.”
His eyes lingered where his fingers had been.
“So I noticed. Any particular reason?”
She shrugged her shoulder, rubbing against his chest. It was a scandalous thing to feel his chest on her arm, his thighs under hers. “I just dislike it.”
The callus on his fingertips tickled her skin. She was almost grateful when his hand left her shoulder and moved to the fabric of her shirt. The rough callus caught on the fabric, dragging just a little as his fingers traced down her arm, over the bend of her elbow before arriving at her hand. For some silly reason she expected him to hold it. He didn’t, but his fingers did move from her hand to her skirt, opening and closing as they gathered up the material. His gaze was so intent, his eyes so beautiful, the tingles that stretched from her neck to her hand so fascinating, she didn’t realize what he was doing at first. But when cool air hit her knees, reality came crashing back.
“What do you do?”
“Well, I could be planning on tossing up your skirts.”
“We are on a horse.”
“I’m not getting your point.”
People could do that on horses? “You cannot be serious.”
It was hard to tell with her vision blocked by the setting sun as it was, but she was pretty sure the creases at the corners of his eyes deepened, which meant he was amused.
“Duchess, someone has sadly neglected your education.”
“Women are not educated in such things.”
“Uh-huh.” His response was low and deep, sensual nuance thickening his accent. She loved his accent. It was so different from her natural language, and different from the English spoken by the few white people she’d seen. His word choice was fuller, his grammar better. “Mine would be.”
She gasped, and not because it was such a forbidden thing to say, but because it found such a home inside her. She could imagine this man doing wild things with his woman. She could imagine his woman enjoying it. She could imagine being his woman.
Just the imagining sent the tingles in her arms leaping to her thighs, sensitizing the skin that seemed to swell into the curve of his palm. Between her legs her private parts swelled, too, and her heartbeat picked up the pace. This was desire, she realized. The evil thing that kept her on her knees in church. The downfall of mankind. This was the reason Tejala chased her. To feel this with her. To be the only one to feel this with her. It would not happen.
She closed her eyes as Sam’s hand continued to pull up her skirt, drawing courage from her purpose, but not brazenness. She could not just smile and make nice while Sam exposed her legs. There was enough of her upbringing still healthy to make that impossible.
“What’s going on in your head, Isabella?”
“Is it really possible to have relations on a horse?”
His hand stopped moving. Against her side, his chest expanded on an indrawn breath and then stopped. She had actually shocked him. She had the feeling not many people did that.
He let the breath out on a slow, even expulsion. “Feeling adventurous?”
Adventure implied risk. “Are having relations on a horse more difficult than relations elsewhere?”
His eyes narrowed and his head canted to the side. “I’d feel a whole lot better about answering that question if you didn’t keep referring to things as ‘relations.’”
“My grasp of your language is not that good. I do not know another word.”
“I’ve picked up a bit of Spanish here and there—why don’t you run the words you do know by me?”
And admit she did not know any words at all? She did not think so. “I do know one word in English, but I do not think it is one a lady uses in front of a gentleman.”
His eyebrows rose. “You don’t say?”
“Do not look so eager. It is not a word I will say.”
He grinned. A real one. “Chicken.”
Yes, she was. In many ways.
She caught her lip between her teeth. This was a big step she was taking, probably one she shouldn’t be taking without a lot of thought—one that would have her forever banished from her family, ruined in society’s eyes, fallen in God’s. But Tejala’s men were close, and tomorrow might be too late. She was not foolish enough to think she could win in this game with the outlaw forever. Someday she would be outmaneuvered and her innocence would be taken from her. And she would still be banished from her family, ruined in society’s eyes, still be fallen in God’s eyes. So either way there were consequences, but one way she made the choice. The other, the choice was made for her.
She licked her lips again. Sam’s eyes dropped to her mouth. There was a tension in his muscles that hadn’t been there before. A hardness under her buttock that hadn’t been there before. In contrast, everything in her body softened.
This man who’d risked his life for her interested her. She did not fool herself that Sam was a gentle man. There was a razor edge to his personality, a coldness to his expression that spoke of purpose, but there were also those flashes of humor, and moments of softness. But what she noticed most about him was the lack of cruelty. He was kind to his horse, kind to his dog. Kind to her. Taking him as a lover might not be her worst choice.
She closed her eyes, daring and apprehension rippling through her at the same time, riding the same thought. A lover. She shivered. She was considering taking a lover. And not just any lover, but the infamous Sam MacGregor.
It seemed so much more brazen when she thought in specifics. But the alternative was losing her virginity to rape and becoming the trophy of a man she hated. That was by far more horrifying. She didn’t want the only things she knew of relations between a man and a woman to be taught to her at Tejala’s hands. She didn’t want to hand him one single victory, especially the prize of her virgin’s blood. Taking a lover accomplished many goals. Taking a lover was practical. Her mother had raised her to be very practical.
She opened her eyes. Sam was still watching her mouth. In an experiment, she ran her tongue over her lips again. His gaze followed every movement. Taking a lover was also going to be very fun.
“Do you find me pretty, Sam?”
“Anyone would find you pretty.”
He was still watching her mouth. The dying scream of her mother’s lectures on the dangers of being promiscuous echoed in her mind as she placed her hand over his on her thigh. “That was not what I asked. Do you find me pretty?”
“You’re beautiful.”
It was so hard to be brazen with the sun shining in her eyes, exposing her to every nuance of Sam’s expression. So hard to be confident with Sam watching her as if she were a prisoner intent on escape, his hand on her knee a vivid distraction. Her diaphragm constricted. She took a careful breath and asked, “Beautiful enough to have relations with?”
“Why?”
She was prepared for a simple yes, had her next line rehearsed. She was not ready for “why.” Men did not ask why. They just leapt on the opportunity. Asking why was an insult.
“What do you mean, why?”
Chapter 5
Bella forgot herself and pushed at Sam’s shoulder. It was like hitting a wall in every way except for the inclination her fingers had to linger against the surface, to explore the solid ledge of muscle and bone, to move the shirt aside and know the warmth of his skin intimately. She yanked her hand back. “A man does not ask this of a woman!”
“Seems to me to be a sensible question when a respectable woman propositions a disreputable man.”
He was not disreputable. She knew disreputable. He was not it. The heat of his flesh dallied on her palm, teasing the nerve endings into wanting. She closed her fingers around the need. “It is a very rude question. And the fact that I am sitting as I am is the proof that I am not respectable.”
“I notice you don’t argue my being disreputable.”
The sun was too bright. She could not see his face, but she had a suspicion he was laughing at her. “You had best not be smiling.”
She shaded her eyes. He was.
“You’re real fond of giving orders, aren’t you?”
He was very handsome when he smiled that way, one corner of his mouth a touch higher than the other, his blue eyes darkened with the emotion he usually kept contained. His hand squeezed her knee, reminding her how intimately placed his fingers were. She should have been shocked. Instead, she was taken with a strange breathlessness. “I have not thought about it.”
That was a lie. She tended to be too focused on what she wanted and grew impatient with politeness. Sometimes it was just easier to direct the person. “And you have not answered my question.”
His smile deepened at her pushing. “No. I haven’t.”
His control annoyed her. And excited her. A strange combination. “The question is simple and only requires a yes or no answer.”
Not a muscle on his face moved, but she had the impression he was delving deep into her mind, seeing beneath her skin to motives she didn’t want him to notice. Fear. Desperation. Desire. Finally he spoke.