Texas Lucky (13 page)

“Curt,” she whispered, fingers wrapping about his wrist to push him away, “Curt, you’re driving me insane…”

He laughed, deep in his throat, and claimed her mouth once more as he maneuvered himself on top of her.

Positioning his hard shaft at the warm, welcome crevice between her legs, he did not enter right away, instead moving slowly, sensuously…side to side, around and around, touching the tip of her fire and making her burn yet brighter. He could feel her deep, inner shudders and how her hips began to gyrate and thrust, urging him to plunge hard and deep and fast.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he slid inside her, all the while his mouth raining kisses across her face and down her throat.

And then she was arching her back, digging her head back in the sand as she yanked her bodice open to offer her breasts.

He took them in turn, drawing each nipple into his mouth to nibble between his teeth, delicious and sweet, before releasing to circle with his tongue and then take as much as he could in his mouth.

And all the while he was pumping in and out of her, his arms stiffened to support him as he devoured her breasts.

She had her legs spread wide, knees bent, heels hooked about his buttocks to imprison him tight against her, as though never wanting to let him go.

And it was where Curt was content to stay, for the passion and glory were overwhelming, and he wished this could last forever. But heat was building, and he knew he could not last much longer.

He wanted to take her with him to that zenith of splendor untold and supported himself with only one arm while his free hand searched for, and found, the tight, ripe nub in the heart of her sex.

He pinched ever so gently and massaged and rubbed as she lay beneath him with eyes half-closed, making soft moaning sounds. He could feel her squeezing against him as he continued to thrust into her.

Like hot, wet velvet, she wrapped about him, and when a great, giant shudder consumed her and she cried his name out loud, he thrust into her, hard and fast, to join her in her flight to ecstasy nonpareil.

Afterward, their breathing yet ragged and uneven, he held her close and, feeling the thundering of her heart, he thought again how nothing,
no one
, had ever taken him to such heights of bliss.

And he knew, too, that unless he was very careful, he was going to find himself in a peck of trouble, because Tess Partridge had his mind, as well as his body, spinning faster than a prairie dust devil.

They passed the days trying to escape the heat, and Tess was thrilled when Curt came back from one of his hunting trips and said he had found a little waterfall not too far away. The stream passed on underground without pooling, but it was enough to cool them, and they spent many hours there.

Tess marveled at the grim landscape—iron hills and bluish basaltic arroyos beneath the brooding sky. The scarcity of even the simplest forms of life was eerie.

Her nights continued to be heaven in Curt’s arms, as he continued to make her marvel at the wondrous pleasure their bodies gave to each other.

And more and more, she dared to wonder if it would end once they got to civilization.

When he held her, she felt wholly and completely possessed, as though by the melding of their flesh their hearts united also, making them one.

But afterward, always afterward, he drew away in flesh and in spirit and continued to subtly—and sometimes not so subtly—remind her that she should take her money and go back east where she belonged.

They had been at the shack only five days when she awoke one morning to find herself alone on the crude mattress. She had washed her dress at the waterfall the afternoon before and spread it on a flat rock to dry just outside the cabin. She was reaching for it when Curt appeared.

“We’re leaving,” he said tersely. “Now. Get your things.”

“But why? You didn’t say anything last night.”

“Last night I didn’t know there were Apaches hunting around here.”

Her heart dropped to her knees. “How…how do you know that?” she managed to squeak out.

“I saw the remains of a kill—a javelina with an Apache arrow broken off in the carcass. Fresh, too. Probably last night. We need to get out of here. If they stumble upon us, we won’t have a chance. There’s a real dense mesquite forest a couple of miles north where we can hide if we see dust from their ponies. We’ll move slow to keep from stirring up any ourselves.”

“If they’re around here,” she said as she hastily dressed, “how come they never bothered Saul?”

“Indians don’t bother prospectors all that much, because they’re no real threat to their game or their land. Then, too, Saul probably made friends by giving them beads, things like that.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any beads.”

“No, but you’ve got something they want.”

She looked at him and quirked a brow.

He grinned. “The same thing
I
want.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Come on. We’ll be fine once we reach the mesquite. I’ll buckle the horse and make him lay down, too, so they won’t spot us. There’s probably not many of them, anyway. It’s a hunting party, not a war party. So there’s no need for confrontation if we lay low.”

He mounted and held out his hand to her to swing her up behind him, but then she cried, “No, wait…” and ran back inside.

Curt frowned to see the white bundle, but made no comment.

They rode in tense silence for a time, and then Tess dared ask, “Have you fought Indians before?”

“A few times.”

“How many have you killed?”

Suddenly he reined to a stop and twisted in the saddle. “I don’t like shooting people, Tess. Not outlaws. Not Indians. Not even Yankees during the war. I do it to survive. I do whatever it takes to survive. That’s what life is all about. Or you die. Especially in the West. But I don’t brag about killing, and I try to avoid it. That’s why we’re going to hide now.”

She indicated she understood with a somber nod and said nothing more.

A few moments later, she felt his back go rigid, and terror rippled up her spine even before she heard the dreaded words: “Dust. They’re behind us. We’ll just make it to the mesquite in time.”

Finally reaching the forest, Tess watched, awed, as Curt was able to get the horse to lie down like he wanted. Then he drew her with him to curl at the horse’s belly.

“Don’t move. Don’t make a sound,” he ordered. “We have to stay this way till they ride by.”

The minutes dragged, and Tess became cramped and stiff.

Curt held her against him with one arm while stretching his other across the horse, gun in hand.

She could feel his breath warm against her ear. Her neck was aching, and she struggled to bend it, just a little, to try to get relief.

He squeezed her tighter and whispered, “Stop squirming. They’re right nearby.”

She heard the faint sound of hoofbeats on the rocks.

The pain in her taut neck was like a hot knife, slicing into her muscles. She had to move it, just a little, for it was unbearable.

Gritting her teeth, she pushed her chin down to see the huge, ugly monster creeping toward her leg…
and screamed.

Chapter Eleven

Curt leaped to peer out through the bramble of mesquite and saw the Indians. Perhaps thirty feet away, there were two of them, and already they were raising their rifles in his direction.

But Curt was quicker and fired off two shots.

One was struck in the neck, the other square between the eyes.

At the same instant, his horse, which had been obediently laying on the ground, scrambled up at the sound of gunfire and galloped away.

Tess had rolled into a ball, drawing her knees up to her chin and covering her ears with her hands, and was staring, transfixed, at the huge lizard.

Curt followed her gaze to see the stubby orange and black creature, perhaps a foot and a half long. It was fierce-looking, all right, but if Tess knew anything about the desert she would have known it was no danger unless she provoked it.

With a swift kick, he sent the lizard sailing into the brambles and said, disgusted, “It’s a gila. He would have crawled over you and kept on going.”

“I…I didn’t know that,” she said uncertainly as she got to her feet. There, looking out to see the bodies laying on the ground, cried, “Oh, God, no. You killed them.”

“They would have killed us…or made us beg to die.”

He made his way through the mesquite, with Tess right behind him.

They were laying facedown. Curt rolled them over to make sure they were dead, though he had no doubts.

Tess gasped, “Oh, my God. They’re just boys. No older than Perry. And you killed them, and it’s my fault.”

“Yeah, it’s your fault, all right,” Curt said matter-of-factly, not about to gloss over the situation. It was her fault, damn it, because if she’d kept still and not acted like a silly fool when the gila came along, the Indians would have passed by, never knowing they were there.

“I…I’m so sorry, Curt,” she managed to croak, backing away in horror at the sight. “They’re so young…”

Curt gave a disgusted snort. “They weren’t boys. They were Apache. That makes a difference. They’ve probably been going on raids and killing and scalping for years.”

They were bare-chested and wore buckskin breeches and moccasins. A tattered yellow cavalry bandanna held back the ink-black hair of one of them; the other wore a hat made of a bison scalp with horns sticking out. They were known as deadly warriors, and Curt said as much to Tess.

“So now we’ve got to bury them,” he explained, “because others will come looking for them when they don’t turn up, and if they find the bodies, they’ll track us. We’re still a day’s ride from Fort Verde, and they might catch up with us before we get there.”

“But we can ride their horses. We can go faster.”

“They aren’t horses. They’re ponies—pintos. And we aren’t taking them, because we might be taken for Comanche and get shot at. I’ll round up our horse once we get the graves dug, then I’ll run the ponies off.”

Tess was still feeling sick. In her whole life she had seen only three dead bodies, and they had all been relatives lying in peaceful repose in someone’s parlor. The bloody scene before her was alien and unnerving and magnified by the guilt of knowing it had happened because she was such a coward.

“Let’s dig.”

She blinked at him. “With what?”

He knelt and handed her a sharp stone, then motioned her to follow him as he started walking toward the mesquite grove.

She stared from the stone to him. “You expect me to dig a grave with this?”

“It’s all we’ve got, Tess, but it won’t be too difficult. The ground is mostly sand, and we aren’t going deep—just enough to tuck the bodies in and then pile rocks on top to keep scavengers away long enough for us to make Fort Verde.” He cast a wary eye skyward and frowned to see vultures already starting to make sweeping circles overhead. “They’re the problem. The Chiricahua will spot them right off, so we have to hurry and get the bodies covered.”

Curt chose a spot where there did not appear to be many mesquite roots to hinder digging. Dropping to his knees, he grasped his own sharp rock and began to dig.

Tess watched for only a moment before joining him. Soon blisters formed and her fingers began to bleed, but she dug in a near frenzy, determined to do her share.

Curt watched out of the corner of his eye, and though he was still annoyed with her for causing him to kill when it could have been avoided, he could not help but feel sorry for her. He was almost tempted to shoo her away and say he would finish the job. Hell, he was digging ten times faster and deeper, anyway, but figured she needed the lesson…needed to be shown, by God, just how damn hard life could be. Then maybe she would high-tail it back east—where she belonged.

Sweat dripped from her brow, but Tess kept toiling, well aware that she hardly made a dent in the rocks and sand. Curt was way ahead of her, but she continued working.

At last Curt said, “It’s deep enough. Help me carry them over here.”

Tess swallowed hard.

She had not thought about having to touch the bodies.

Doggedly, she followed him.

“I’ll take the shoulders. You grab the ankles. They aren’t—” he hesitated, about to say they weren’t all that heavy, because they were just kids but decided that would be a cruel reminder. She felt bad about it—as she should—but there was no need to rub it in—“heavy,” he finished.

It was all Tess could do to force herself to reach down and wrap her hands around the flesh that was already turning cold. But she did so, keeping her eyes averted so she would not have to look at the boy whose death would haunt her, she knew, for the rest of her life.

Curt pitched him into the grave, then reached in and took his knife, which had been tied around his waist with a rawhide thong. “I might need it,” he murmured.

When the second Indian was in the ground, Curt said, “You can gather rocks, as big as you’re able to carry, and pile them on while I take one of the ponies and go find our horse.”