Comanche Cowboy (The Durango Family) (23 page)

Surely he wouldn’t? . . .

But even as she thought that, his big hands were spreading her thighs. “You don’t know what begging is, baby,” he whispered, and his breath was hot on her womanhood. “I’m going to give you the Ultimate Kiss, something I’ve never done to a woman before.”

She felt a sense of shock at the idea but her body wanted what he was offering too badly to stop him. Very slowly, she stopped resisting, let his big hands spread her thighs and then gasped when his hot mouth kissed her there. The sensation drove her nearly wild and she caught his dark head in her hands, pressing his mouth against the forbidden place. “Oh, Maverick! Oh, please! Don’t stop now! Ahhh!”

She shuddered as she felt the hot blade of his tongue probe deep within her, his hard hands grasping her thighs, pulling her against his seeking mouth. She turned her body so that her lips could kiss and caress his forbidden place, too. He was big and hard and the slight salt taste of his seed excited her as much as the musky scent of him.

With a moan, she tilted her head back, surrendering to his thrusting in the soft velvet of her mouth while his own kisses probed her womanhood.

Eagles,
she thought, clinging to his hips as he clung to hers.
Eagles falling to the earth.
And with that thought, she surrendered to his lips teasing the very depths of her, sucking him deep within herself so that she might drink his seed. She couldn’t get enough of him, had never wanted him so badly. And as she fell into blackness, surrendering to her desire, to the warm probing of his tongue, she drank deeply of him. She felt him surge and shudder as he gave up the very essence of his maleness to her eager mouth.

They both gave themselves to that ecstasy, and when it was over, they were both almost weeping. Then he turned and took her in his arms, kissed his seed off her lips. “Baby, baby! I don’t know. . . . What am I going to do about you?”

He sounded sad and despairing as he cradled her in his arms, kissing her again. “Why, after all these years, did I have to find you, fall for you?”

She felt both guilty and puzzled.
What was he hinting at?
She thought of the possible trap she might be leading him into if her worst suspicions proved correct. She cared about him too much not to play fair with him. “There’s . . . something I should tell you, Maverick,” she began.

“I don’t want to hear it,” he shook his head stubbornly. “Let’s forget about all the problems and complications just for today, imagine what it would be like to be together forever, making love like this the rest of our lives.”

She was only too eager to forget about everything but him, the way she felt fulfillment in his powerful arms. They made love again very leisurely with great gentleness, and it was fulfilling in a peaceful, different sort of way. After that, they lay on the blanket locked in each other’s arms and slept away the afternoon.

It was almost sundown when she finally stirred and sat up, yawning. Maverick sat on a nearby rock, smoking and watching her quietly. She couldn’t read his troubled expression. “What are you doing awake?”

“Protecting you,” he said simply, patting the holstered Colt in his lap. “If both of us slept that soundly, we’d be easy to sneak up on.” His face was gentle, his eyes soft as he looked at her. “You’ve complicated the hell out of my life, Reb. Always before, I could drift, go anywhere, do anything I pleased.”

She shrugged as she pulled on her jeans. “I’m not holding you.”

His face contorted as if the confession were being wrung out of him against his will. “Oh, yes you are, baby, in an invisible grip so strong, I’m not sure I can ever break free . . . or want to.”

She didn’t know what to say to that.
Was he proposing marriage? Did he hold her responsible for the magic they held for each other?

When he continued to stare into space, smoking silently, she decided she might as well finish getting dressed. Cayenne looked around.
Where had she left her boots?

She spotted them over by a rock, where she had taken them off to go into the pool, and started after them.

“Be careful poking around in those rocks,” Maverick called after her. “Snakes like to bed up in cool places like that in the daytime.”

“Oh, you worry too much!” She reached for the boots, her attention on them. The warning rattle came too late and she saw only the flash of the triangle-shaped head as the rattler struck.

Horrified, she looked down at the gray-green, writhing body of the big rattlesnake, staring in horror at the two fang marks on her ankle. “Oh, Lord, Maverick! He got me! I’ve been bit!”

“Maverick! Help! I’m bit!” Even as she stared unbelievingly at the two drops of blood oozing from the fang marks on her angle, her mind recoiled from what her eyes told her. The big diamondback rattler slithered across the ground back toward the safety of the rocks.

Maverick ran to her side and the snake reared its head, hissing and rattling a warning.

He grabbed a stone. “Afraid to shoot it; might be a war party in the area!” He crushed the ugly triangle-shaped head, leaving the thick body writhing and twisting as the snake died.

Then he turned back to her. “Let’s see, Cayenne.”

Trembling, Cayenne sat down on the ground and held out one bare foot. Maverick took her trim ankle in his two hands and inspected the fang marks.

She knew by his frown it was serious. She was suddenly aware of their distance from a doctor, from any kind of help. “Maverick, what happens now?”

He glanced up and she saw the fear in his eyes.

She said, “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment, staring at the bite. “Need to work fast,” he murmured, “before that poison spreads.” He took the piece of rawhide he always carried in his gun belt, looped it around her thigh over her pants, and pulled it into a tourniquet to slow the flow of blood. Then, very slowly, he took his knife from the scabbard.

She tried to remember she was a hero’s daughter. “You—you’re going to have to cut into it, aren’t you?”

“That’s what they usually do,” he answered softly, not looking at her as he turned the knife over and over in his big hands.

Cayenne swallowed hard. Raised in Texas, she knew what had to be done to save a rattler’s victim. Although some said a snake bite should be wrapped tight with rags soaked in coal oil, there was a better way. Someone good with a knife made crisscross cuts across the fang marks, sucking out as much of the poisoned blood as possible. Then they filled the hapless victim full of whiskey. Sometimes the person lived, sometimes not. But it was her only chance.

She took a deep breath. “I’m ready when you are.”

Maverick seemed to be studying his own reflection in the shiny blade of the knife. “I—I can’t,” he mumbled. “I just can’t cut a woman.”

“What?” She sat bolt upright in surprise. “You’ve got to, Maverick. There’s no one else and I’m no good with a knife!”

His hands were actually trembling as he stared at his own reflection in the blade. “I can’t do it, Cayenne, I’m sorry . . . I just can’t!”

“You mean
won’t
!” she snapped, really frightened now.
What was wrong with him?
He seemed to be going to pieces before her eyes, crumbling into a helpless mass of indecision. She had never seen him like this before and she was scared, realizing how much she had come to depend on the strong, decisive Maverick Durango with whom she’d ridden out of Kansas. “Maverick, you’ve got to do it! Otherwise, I might die!”

Her words seemed to arouse him from his stupor and he looked into her eyes and she saw fresh anguish there. “Oh, God, baby! I—I don’t think I can!”

“Then give me the knife and I’ll try to do it myself!” Her hand covered his, and his was cold, shaking.

“Cayenne, if you’re no hand with a knife—”

“Then you do it!” She was both angry and terrified.
What would happen to her out here in the middle of nowhere, badly snake-bitten and depending on a man who seemed to be coming apart before her eyes?

He shook his head and there was dread, terror in his eyes. “Don’t ask me to cut you, baby; have your blood running over my hands. . . .”

“Maverick, I may die! Do you hear me?” She reached out and caught his dark face between her palms. “Don’t you care about me?”

His gray, tortured eyes looked into hers. “I—I love you, Cee Cee.”

“Maverick,” she pleaded, “if you love me, do it! You’re good with a knife! You won’t hurt me as much as I’d hurt myself! If you love me, do it!”

He shook her hands off and the scar on his cheek looked very white on his dark cheek as she stroked it unconsciously. “That’s what she said. . . exactly what she said,” he mumbled. “I’ll never forget how white her skin was. . . .”

Dear God, what was he muttering about?
She seemed to feel the poison starting to course through her veins with every beat of her heart, spreading slowly through her body. She had never felt such helpless frustration and rage. “If you love me, help me!” she begged. “Do you want to see me die a slow, painful death?”

His eyes seemed almost glazed with shock. “No, Annie, no, don’t beg me to do that. Please don’t ask—”

“I’m not Annie, I’m Cayenne, remember?” She leaned over, kissing his trembling lips as his eyes stared into some horror of the past. “I love you, Maverick Durango! Oh, dearest, I need your help so badly!”

He shook all over abruptly, as if awakening from a bad dream, and stared at her, then down at the knife in his hands, the fang marks on her ankle. Once again, he became the competent stallion of a man she had come to rely on. “Here, baby, lie back and I’ll take care of this. I’m sorry, but it’ll hurt a little.”

“I’m not afraid,” she lied, knowing in his expert hands the knife would hurt as little as possible. She bit down on her lip so she wouldn’t cry out as the sharp knife poised above her white skin. For just a moment, he hesitated, and then he made two expert cuts across the wound.

She forced herself not to whimper at the pain, afraid of the effect on the man who had her blood smeared on his hands. “It’s okay, Maverick, I’m okay.” She sighed and swallowed hard to keep from weeping.

He bent over her slim ankle, putting his mouth, hot and wet, on the wound and sucking the poisonous blood. She felt faint now as she watched him suck the wound, her blood smeared across his mouth as he spat the poison out.

Cayenne lay back, her leg throbbing from the poison, his mouth warm and sucking on her ankle.

He reached up and loosened the tourniquet, her blood smeared across his face. “You okay, baby?”

She tried to appear perkier than she felt. “I’m fine. Really I am.”

“What’d you do with that bottle of vanilla?”

She rose up on her elbows. “Why on earth do you want that at a time like this?”

“Is it in the saddlebags? We don’t have any whiskey but there’s alcohol in vanilla. I need to wash that wound out.”

She nodded, feeling worse by the second as the poison slowly worked its way through her system with each beat of her heart. “Yes, saddlebags. Just don’t make me drink it.”

He got it and came back, pouring it over the wound.

She winced at the sting. “Papa always blew on it when he had to put liniment on a hurt.”

Maverick looked at her thoughtfully as he put the cork back in the bottle and she wished she could read his thoughts. “You think a lot of your father, don’t you?”

“Everyone does. Joe McBride is the kindliest, bravest man in all Texas.”

“That’s a big state.” He looked away.

“Papa’s a big man.” Cayenne lay back on the blanket and closed her eyes. Her head throbbed dully.

“I always wanted a dad like that,” Maverick said wistfully, “wondered what it would be like to sit at a real dinner table surrounded by a family rather than fighting for scraps in a teepee like a bunch of hungry wolves.”

“Didn’t the Durangos have a dinner table?” She supposed it would be sad to have been fathered by some “squawman” hunter and then deserted. No doubt his Indian mother wasn’t well treated by the tribe after the white man left. Maverick had more scars than the one on his face.

“Yes, but it wasn’t really
my
family,
my
dinner table, my home the way Annie described the way it should be.”

Annie.
Again Annie
. But as the poison moved through her system, she felt too bad to be jealous, to ask curious questions. Perspiration beaded on her upper lip and her vision seemed clouded when she looked at him. “Thirsty,” she whispered, “so thirsty.”

“I’ll get some water.” She tried to watch him as he went over, filled a canteen at the little pool, and brought it back. Objects wavered before her eyes. He came back and half lifted her, pouring a trickle of cold water between her dry lips. Cayenne drank greedily.

“In a few minutes,” she whispered, “when I get to feeling a little better, we need to ride on.”

He shook his head, lying her back down on the blanket. “Cee, Cee, you aren’t going anywhere, not for days.”

“But we need to get to Texas. . . .”

“I said you weren’t going anywhere,” he said sharply. “I won’t lie to you, Cee Cee; you’ve got tough sledding ahead of you. I’ll take care of you the best way I can.”

She felt too weak, too sick to argue with him as she sighed and stretched out on the shaded blanket. “You bossy Yankee sympathizer . . .”

“That’s right, Little Rebel, and you do what I tell you! We won, remember?” His tone sounded a little too strained, a little too light as he tried to joke.

Her head swam dizzily. “Oh, Maverick, I feel so bad! I’m scared! Can’t we get help?”

“Easy, baby, easy.” He sat down next to her, gathering her into his arms. “You can’t ride and I sure can’t leave you to go for help. . . .”

“No, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.” She caught his hand, suddenly terrified of waking up and finding him gone.

She felt his lips brush her forehead lightly as one does a frightened child. “I’ll be here for you always, Cayenne. You hear me? I’m not leaving or going anywhere without you.”

The words came faintly, as if he were vowing it to himself. As if he felt angry with himself for his feelings. She lay her face against his wide, bare chest, taking comfort in the strength and size of the man. “You’ll look after me?” she whispered. “You’ll look after me?”

He kissed her hair. “Always and forever, baby.
’Long as I got a biscuit, you got half.”

No Westerner could make a stronger commitment than that. She sighed and relaxed as he lay her back on the blanket, fanning her perspiring face with his hat.

The pain seemed to be inching up her swollen leg with every beat of her heart. By twisting her head, she could see the discolored ankle. She tried to keep her thoughts straight but they tangled with each other like brightly colored ribbons in a swirl.

“Maverick, what you said about Annie—”

“We won’t discuss that. Not now, not ever,” he said coldly and stopped fanning. “That’s in the past.”

She tried to straighten out the dizzying swirl of colored ribbons in her vision, wondering jealously if Annie had been beautiful, if he had loved her so very much. “But that past is never very far from your mind, is it? Why don’t you tell me about her?”

“Because it hurts to have your heart torn out! Dammit, can you understand that?”

“Funny, Papa said the same thing,” she whispered, remembering the grave. Somehow, the grave seemed important now. . . . She should try to tell Maverick about it if she could ever get her thoughts and her words straight. But all she managed to say was, “I—I think I’m in love with you.” The ribbons swirled her around in a spin toward blackness.

“And I love you, by damn, I love you!” She felt him kiss the tips of her fingers. “That complicates the hell out of my plans!”

“Complicates mine, too,” she mumbled to herself as she drifted in and out of consciousness. “I just needed a gunfighter, that’s all, didn’t mean to fall for you. . . .”

“What?” Maverick said. “What’d you say?”

She tried to tell him then about how Bill Slade and his partners had showed up several weeks ago to stay at her papa’s ranch, but the words came out in a delirious mumble. She intended now to confess her plans; to warn him not to go to McBride, Texas with her, that she’d probably only get him killed. But she couldn’t connect one word with another and her head pounded and echoed like distant war drums.

She felt him lay her on the blanket, brush her damp hair from her face. “Oh, Little Reb,” he choked out, “don’t leave me! I’ve waited too long for you and now I’ve got a terrible decision to make! But I swore on her body! I swore!”

She barely heard him, wanted to ask him but couldn’t remember how to connect words together in a question. The thoughts swirled again like bright ribbons in a dazzling light and she knew it was the sun as it moved so that she was only partially lying in the shade of the hot July day. . . .

It had been unseasonably hot that day, too, that fateful day. . . .

Because of the unseasonably warm weather, the church and ladies decided on a Saturday afternoon picnic. Most of the men had been busy with farm chores.

Cayenne twisted restlessly on the blanket and felt Maverick wipe the sweat from her face with a cold rag. “Easy, Reb,” he whispered, “take it easy.”

“Late,” she whispered, thinking of the picnic, “going to be late.”

From a long way off, she heard him chuckle softly. “Wherever it is you think you’re going, baby, I’m afraid you aren’t going to make it.”

Of course she was going to make it.
She’d packed the picnic basket full of fried chicken, her best chocolate cake, homemade pickles, and crusty fresh bread.
If she could just get her little sisters dressed!
Papa had harnessed the old mule to the buggy for her and then ridden away. He had left to comfort a dying old lady on the far side of the nameless little community recently formed near the Lazy M Ranch.

Ribbons of dazzling color whirled and tangled themselves through her mind as she writhed and sweated on the blanket. Ribbons, she thought.
Hair ribbons. Brightly colored sashes.

In her mind, it was a warm Saturday afternoon in the past and she was trying to hurry her little sisters who dawdled as usual.

Lynnie, are your eyeglasses clean?
The thin, serious nine-year-old looked up from her book and nodded.
Lynnie, must you read all the time? My stars! Where’s your baby sister?

Lynnie put her book down reluctantly and went up the stairs. In a minute, she called down the stairs, Angel has wet her drawers again.

Oh, honestly! Trying to get four younger sisters off to the picnic was almost more trouble than it was worth!
Well, Lynnie, change them and get Angel’s dress on her!
she shouted up the stairs.
Steve! Steve! Where are you?