Dark Torment (24 page)

He rocked back on his heels, a slow smile stretching his taut
lips. It was not a pleasant smile.

“I don’t think you understand what I’ve been
telling you, Sarah. Our positions have been reversed. You no longer give the
orders. I do. And it would behoove you to keep that in mind.”

“I won’t have you pawing me anytime you feel like
it!” Shock at her reaction to his touch had made her foolish. She knew
better than to challenge him now, before she had had time to analyze the
situation, but the words could not be rescinded. Her breasts felt as if they
were on fire where his hand had so casually brushed them. After what had
happened between them—the shameful things that he had done to her naked
body, the even more shameful things he had caused her to do and to feel, the
horrible humiliation that had overcome her afterward—she had thought that
she had been cured forever of the cursed attraction he had held for her from
the beginning. Now it appeared that, while her mind might have recovered, the
message had not yet gotten through to her traitorous body. And he knew it, the
swine. She could tell by the mocking gleam in his eyes as he stared at the
rigid nubs of her nipples, clearly visible as they pressed wantonly against her
thin cotton nightrail.

“I won’t paw you again—until you ask me
nicely,” he said with a nasty smile.

Sarah should have felt relieved by his mild response to her
ill-advised challenge—she knew very well that, whatever he chose to do to
her, she had no means of stopping him—but the twin demons in his blue
eyes gave her pause. He was not picking up the gauntlet she had flung at his
feet because he felt no need to. The knowledge worried her.

He bent to scoop up the blanket he had dropped beside her. Sarah
watched him, her mind working furiously, as he extracted a wicked-looking,
curved-blade knife from the scabbard attached to his belt. Holding the blanket
in one hand, he pierced it with the knife, making a small slit in the center
and then another one, perpendicular to the first.

“Gallagher,” she began carefully as he returned the
knife to its scabbard. At his hard look, she hastily amended her unintentional
error. “Dominic.” He inclined his head, approving the change.
“Why did you abduct me? To pay my father back for having you beaten, or .
. . ?”

“Not your father. You. I mean to pay
you
back,
Miss
Sarah.”

“I tell you I didn’t tell anyone about—about
what happened! As if I would! You must see that I had as much to lose as
you.”

“Not quite as much. I nearly lost my life.”

“Not because of me!” His shuttered face told her that
she was wasting her time and her breath—and making him angry to boot. She
tried a new tack. “When a runaway convict is caught—and most
are—they are usually hanged. If Percival—if my father had you
beaten, I can see why you ran. But if you were to go back now, taking me with
you, I could say that you saved me from the bushrangers, and you wouldn’t
be punished at all. I could even get my father to try to get your sentence
reduced, as a reward. Wouldn’t that be better than spending the rest of
your life running?”

“Mmmm.” He shook out the blanket, making the dust rise
around them in a swirling cloud. Sarah coughed, managing just in time not to
glare at him. If she had any hope of persuading him to take her home, she had
best not anger him. “Hold still.” He dropped the blanket over her
head as he spoke. Sarah jumped, surprised as she was enveloped in the stifling
folds; then as he pulled the slit down over her head she realized that he had
fashioned her a rough poncho. The gray blanket with its black diamond pattern
was wool, hand-woven by an aborigine sometime in the distant past, and it was
faded and dusty, but it covered her far more adequately than did her tattered
nightrail. She guessed that when she was standing, the blanket would hang past
her knees, so that her nightrail would show only from the middle of her slim
calves to her ankles. With her bare feet, filthy now, protruding, and her hair
hanging to her waist in a tangle of hopeless snarls, Sarah knew that she must
look ludicrous. But at least she was decently covered.

“Ga—Dominic,” she said, striving to contain her
impatience as he hacked off two corners of the blanket poncho and, gathering up
the rope he had used to bind her wrists, moved down to crouch at her feet.
Still he had not replied to her proposal. Sarah allowed herself the luxury of
darting a glance at the top of his dusty black hat as he bent his head,
studying her feet. When he picked up one of her feet and fitted a piece of
blanket to her sole, wrapping the ends around her toes and ankle, she jiggled
her captive foot to get his attention. “Dominic!”

“Hold still.” He looked up, frowning, then removed the
piece of blanket around her foot and pierced it in several places with his
knife. After cutting the rope in half, he again returned the knife to the
scabbard at his waist.

“Did you hear me?” Sarah could not stifle the
exasperation she felt. It was plain in her voice. He was fitting the blanket
around her foot again, then using the rope to lace it into a crude sandal. At
her words, he glanced up.

“Oh, I heard you.” His voice was dry. “I may be
a convict, Sarah, but I am not a fool. Why should I put my life in your hands?
I have only your word that you would do as you say, and frankly, me
darlin’, I don’t trust you an inch. You should feel fortunate that
I don’t take a whip to you just to show you how it feels. After all, you
had me whipped when I did nothing more than make love to you—with your
cooperation. What would you consider suitable punishment for abduction, and,
uh, everything else, I wonder?” He shook his head. “I’m not
inclined to find out.”

“I did not have you whipped!”

He was fitting the second piece of blanket around her other foot
and lacing it in place. The brim of his hat shielded his face from her eyes.
“You may not have given the express order, but you must have known damned
well what would happen when you went sobbing to Papa about what I’d done
to you.”

“I tell you I didn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter.” His voice suddenly was
weary. “I’m not going to argue with you, Sarah. Here you are, and
here you stay, and that’s an end to it.”

“Won’t you at least consider . . . ?”

“No, I won’t.” He looked up at her then, his
expression suddenly brutal. “I’ve had enough of being the next
thing to a slave. I’m not going back, and you’re not either. At
least, not for the present.”

“Dominic . . .”

“Be silent.” He stood up abruptly, reaching down a
hand to grasp her arm and haul her to her feet when she just sat there gaping
at him. “I’ve made up my mind, and there’s an end to
it.” He slipped his hat from his head as he spoke and plopped it down on
her tangled mane. “Here. I don’t want you getting sun stroke. And
you’ll need this, too.”

“This” was the dirty, still-damp bandanna, which he
tied over her nose and mouth. Sarah stared at him over the edge of the cloth
when he turned her back around after tying the kerchief behind her head.

“What about you?” The question was muffled by the
mask.

He stood there looking at her, the sun burning down on his bare
head, bringing out the blue-black lights in his ebony waves. His eyes were very
blue in his dark face as he surveyed her without expression.

“I think I can stand the heat better than you,” was
all he said before he clasped her waist and lifted her back into the saddle,
turning her sideways this time so that the leather would not chafe the tender
skin on the insides of her thighs.

It was nearly dusk when they drove the sheep through a grove of
ghost gums to the tiny trickle of water that was all that was left of a stream
that, judging from the wide, sun-dried banks, had once been bountiful. Sarah
stared hard at it. Noting the position of the slowly sinking sun and recalling
as best she could the way they had come, she decided that it must be
Kerry’s Creek, which ran along the northern edge of the station before
veering off toward the mountain range known as the Australian Alps. The creek
eventually—she could not be sure of her distances—emptied into the
Murrumbidgee River near the town of Wagga Wagga. If she could manage to escape,
her one hope would be to follow the creek to safety. The trek would be arduous,
to say the least, but not, she thought, impossible, now that she knew in what
direction to head and had the creek to provide her with water. It would never
do simply to run away whenever the opportunity presented itself without some
kind of plan. If she did, without some notion of where she was and where she
was going, she risked getting lost in the bush. And getting lost in the bush
meant quick death.

Sarah had given up trying to hold herself stiffly erect. The heat
and the miles they had traveled had robbed her even of that last prideful
gesture. She sat sideways, slumped back against Dominic’s sweat-soaked
chest, her head lolling against one broad shoulder, her legs trailing over one
of his as she practically sat in his lap in the saddle. The arm holding the
reins was around her back, supporting her. In such close contact with him, his
body heat was almost tangible. She could feel the steely hardness of his
muscles, hear the rhythmic beat of his heart, smell the musky,
perspiration-tinged scent that reminded her constantly that she was being held
close by a man. With the heavy wool blanket enveloping her, she felt as if she
were being roasted alive. But the alternative was to ride once again with only
the thin nightrail to shield her from the curious eyes of the men. And this she
refused to do.

The hat and kerchief had been a blessing throughout the sweltering
afternoon. The sun had been relentless; the clouds of dust had reduced Dominic,
who had no protection from them, to sporadic fits of coughing. Sarah had not
offered to return either his hat or his bandanna to him, and to her surprise,
given his present hostility toward her, he had not suggested it. Not even when
his face began to burn to a deep, dark red and the coughing got so bad that it
shook his body. If he wanted to be chivalrous,
she
would not object,
Sarah thought caustically. Evidently it hadn’t occurred to him that, as a
native Australian, she was probably less susceptible to the conditions than he,
who came from a country noted for its cool mists and gentle rains. Or, if it
had occurred to him, he was stubbornly refusing to admit it. If she felt an
occasional twinge of concern when his coughing shook his chest, she squelched
it with the reminder that, thanks to him, she was physically miserable and
worried about her family’s being worried about her. They would have no
way of knowing that she had been abducted by Lowella’s runaway convict.
And even if they did, Sarah thought, it would provide them no comfort. They
could not guess that, whatever other emotions he might generate inside her, she
was not frightened of him. Although, she thought, casting a darkling look back
at him, perhaps she should be.

The smell of the water had apparently reached the sheep, because
they were bleating frantically, nearly running as they struggled toward the
creek. The horses were affected too. The one they were riding, an Appaloosa
with dark gray haunches fading to near white with gray spots toward the
withers, picked up its pace, tossing its head and whinnying in anticipation.
When the sheep reached the creek, they milled around in the water, spreading
out endlessly until they were chest deep in muddy water for as far as the eye
could see. Dominic made no attempt to hold back his horse. It splashed into the
stream, which came to just past its knees, nudging aside a sheep and lowering
its head to drink thirstily. The other riders, seven in all, were likewise
watering their horses. There was no fear of the sheep straying now that they
had found the stream.

Eventually Dominic pulled up the horse’s head, to its
obvious displeasure. It snorted and sidestepped dramatically, tossing its head
and pawing at the water. He controlled it seemingly without effort, reinforcing
Sarah’s earlier impression that he was at home with horses. With shouts
and swings of the long whip that had been tied to the skirt of the saddle, he
began to force the sheep out of the water before they could drink themselves to
death. The other riders were doing the same. With Dominic’s arm no longer
available to support her, Sarah was forced to put her arms around his waist and
cling tightly to keep from sliding from the saddle. Pressed so tightly against
him, she grew ever more aware of the hard male contours of his body, of his
scent, and of the crisp, damp hairs that curled on his chest, on which her
cheek was forced to rest. As she felt his body move, heard his lilting voice
shouting at the recalcitrant sheep, and felt his thighs shifting beneath her
own, Sarah realized to her horror that her body was responding blindly to his
nearness. Having once learned the secret joys of being female, her body was
reacting automatically to the overwhelming presence of the man who had schooled
it.

It was dark by the time the sheep were at last herded together
some little way from the creek. The men would watch them in shifts; a rider
went from man to man, informing each of which shift he would be expected to
take. When he got to Dominic, he eyed Sarah hungrily throughout the terse
conversation. Sarah, inwardly shuddering at the thick-featured, unshaven face
with its two rotten teeth that were clearly visible as he spoke, pressed her
face against Dominic’s chest and refused to look at him. It had just
occurred to her that she was the only woman, and a helpless captive at that,
among eight men, every one of whom, besides the man she was now cringing
against, was eying her with some degree of speculation. Sarah had an uneasy
suspicion that they were assuming that she would provide the evening’s
entertainment. . . .