The Renegade's Woman (6 page)

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing? Are you out of your mind?" She thrust the coffee at him, spilling half of it in the process.

"What's this?" He sniffed the cup suspiciously.

"Arsenic, " she answered, wishfully. "Go on, try it. " She planted her fists on her hips and watched him take a tentative sip, imagining him keeling over dead right there and solving her dilemma once and for all.

"Mmm. Good, " he said, nodding. "How is it made?"

"Beans, " she answered, hardly able to suppress her irritation. "Ground up beans from South America. "

"Beans, " he muttered, then shot a glance toward the wagons and handed her his rifle. "Hold this while I drink your arsenic. The others are watching. "

"I ought to shoot you, you know, " she said, cradling the heavy gun in her arms.

"If you did, you wouldn't get what you came for. " His eyes slid to her and glittered over the rim of the cup.

"And what would that be?"

"To be fucked, good, long and hard. "

She sucked in a breath, and raised the rifle to shoot his arrogant, conceited, annoyingly perceptive brains out. But before she'd moved two inches, she heard the clink of tin landing on dirt, and he'd grabbed her and slipped behind the nearest tree.

"No!" With her free hand she pummeled him, knocking his hat to the ground.

His mouth crushed down on hers, his tongue thrusting into her surprised gasp. He tasted like coffee and bruised ego and hot male fury. His fingers stabbed through her hair, seizing it in his fist and jerking her head back to give him complete control over her supplication. She bit back a moan, fighting the overwhelming wave of desire that engulfed her.

He backed her up, propelling her deeper and deeper into the forest as he ravaged her mouth, further and further away from prying eyes... and the safety of the wagons... until finally he pushed her against the trunk of a huge pine. She still clung to his Winchester, hanging onto it like a lifeline to sanity.

"You fight me, but you came to me. " Covering her mouth with one hand, he ripped her dress down the front with the other, then the camisole beneath it. "As I knew you would. Because you want me. "

He spread the shredded cloth wide, baring her to his ravenous gaze. He touched her and she told herself it was the cold that made the goosebumps cascade down her flesh.

"You want my red hands on your white body, making you tremble for my touch. "

She shook her head. No.

He released her mouth and covered her breasts with his hands, sending a shock of need shimmering through her entire body. She couldn't help it, a moan of pleasure escaped her throat.

"You want my savage mouth sucking you, biting you, licking your innocent flesh so your body burns with excitement. "

He cupped her breasts and illustrated his words with a sinful skill and thoroughness. She arched into him, crying out at the pleasure she was completely helpless to resist.

"You want my untamed cock inside you, pumping into you until you scream my name. Isn't that true, Pale As Moonlight?"

"No! Please, no, " she begged. He took the gun from her and set it down, watching her with feral eyes. Then his hands were all over her, tearing her dress away, her camisole, her petticoat. Until she was naked in his arms again, just as she wanted to be. Needed to be.

"Oh, yes, it's true, " she moaned. "I tried to stay away. " She threw her arms around his neck, pulling him close, breathing in his musky scent, burying her face in his long, raven-black hair. "I wanted to stay away. "

"But you couldn't. "

"No. " She writhed under his touch. He touched her everywhere he could reach, probing, pinching, stroking her heated skin with his rough fingers. "I couldn't keep away from you. "

"You dreamed of me. Of my body conquering yours, in every way you could imagine--" He spread her wide and slid a finger into her, then two, plumbing her slippery depths, drawing out, then plunging back in. "--and even ways you couldn't. " The forefinger of his other hand dipped into her, then probed her back entry, penetrating her there as well.

She gasped in shock, struggling to wriggle free of his pinioning fingers. He slammed his chest against her, and thrust his knee between her thighs, pinning her against the tree so she couldn't move. Relentlessly, he continued to stroke in and out of her until her knees were liquid and her bones turned to quicksilver. She told herself she should scream in protest, but she was too aroused to summon the strength, unable to do more than cling to him and let him have his devilish way with her.

"It didn't matter that I was an Indian -- different, wild and forbidden. Every waking minute you thought only of me, of our bodies locked together, sweating and naked, and how good I make you feel between your legs. "

She whimpered, beyond reason, beyond anything but surrendering to his unremitting sensual assault. "Yes, damn you! Yes!"

His fingers dove deep into her. She cried out, but his mouth was on hers, capturing the sound before she could betray them both. With his callused thumb, he circled the fiery nubbin at the center of her trembling desire. She clutched at him, her nails piercing the soft flannel on his back, shaking with the craving to once again feel his hard male weapon slay the moist, hungering need deep within her.

"And you hate me for making you crazy like this, " he said, low and rough. "Crazy for wanting something that is so forbidden to us both. Yet impossible to live without. "

His thumb swirled around her, bringing her to her knees. She clung to him and cried, "God, how I hate you!"

He followed her down, relentless. Her climax burst over her, merciless, violent, shudderingly intense.

"I hate you, too--" he said, his voice threaded with dark torment, wringing every last morsel of sensation from her limp and throbbing body. She held onto him like a capsized sailor clinging to his vessel.

He wrestled with his trousers and yanked them down his thighs, then peeled her off his body, turned her and pushed her to her hands and knees, swiftly moving behind her.

"--More than I've hated anything in my life--" he gritted out and mounted her, plunging his thick, iron-like rod straight into her.

She almost screamed in pleasure, digging her fingernails into the rich forest sod to brace herself against his fierce onslaught. His hands found her breasts, and his teeth found her neck. He thrust into her again, and again, making deep grunting sounds each time he rammed in to the hilt.

His body stiffened and the last thing she heard before another explosive orgasm blasted her senses was a great roar echoing through the forest, like the cry of a wounded bear.

He collapsed over her, his chest heaving against her back. She could feel the effort it took a moment later to lift himself off and roll to the ground, taking her down on top of him. He pulled her to his sweat-drenched chest and wrapped his strong arms around her, drawing in big gulps of breath.

Her rapid breathing and racing heart finally slowed, and his pulse beat loud and steady under her cheek. He rested his chin against her temple and kissed her hair.

"--More than I knew it was possible to hate, " he softly said.

Chapter Four

Standing Bear sent his woman back to the wagons when the moon was near the horizon and the owl had returned from the hunt. He wanted to keep her with him all night. But it was too dangerous for them both. Even after this relatively short time, there would be questions from her sister and the others.

From the forest edge, he watched her skipping through the dark toward the circle of wagons, pivoting to walk backwards and wave to him one last time, wrapping his stolen shirt around her torn dress and luscious breasts, shooting one of her sweet kisses through the air like an arrow to pierce his heart.

He closed his eyes and hummed a low chant to ward off disaster. But it was too late. He knew it had already befallen him.

He had stepped in some steaming coyote shit this time.

How had it happened? To him of all the People of His Kind? He, Standing Bear, Club Men Warrior and sworn enemy of the whites, had been bewitched by a woman as pale as the stars above. A woman of the very enemy who had raped his mother and butchered his father.

Coyote must surely be laughing at him now.

He had wanted her as a captive, to use for his pleasure, to serve him in his youth and tend him in his old age. To make her bear his children in exchange for the lives of his parents. To keep her bound to him for a lifetime to soothe his anger over their deaths.

Not to love her. Never that.

But somehow, somewhere, between his anguished confession of hatred and the last time she had lain in his arms, his body joined as one with hers, he'd come to realize he would never be happy without this woman in his life.

And he'd also realized he couldn't ever have her.

Not without bringing the wrath of the Horse Soldiers down upon their village as had happened to so many others over the past ten winters. As much as he hated to admit it, Black Crow was right about that. He'd been naive ever to think otherwise. He'd been thinking through his rut, not his wisdom.

Now he was thinking through both, and it was pure torture.

He went without sleep that night, and in the morning he ate nothing as the others filled themselves with fresh trout and cool spring water. He thought of the sharp taste of

Pale As Moonlight's arsenic beans and wondered about this southamerica she said they came from. There was so much their peoples had to teach each other. It was a shame no one had the desire to listen any more. Only to hate and to kill.

He decided he would listen. To his own heart, and the spirit of the earth and skies. See what they had to say about this situation.

Pounding some soap root from his medicine pouch, he carefully bathed in the stream they had camped beside. Next he dressed in his breechclout, looped the sweetgrass rope over his head and wound it around his shoulder. His rifle he handed to Whistling Hills. He only wanted his war club with him on this quest. He went and retrieved it from its place by his sleeping blanket, and squatted next to the fire. Pulling the lock of Pale As Moonlight's hair from his leather pouch, he used a ball of hot pitch from a fire log to attach the long strands to the narrow end of his club, right next to the bunch of eagle feathers and buffalo hair. When he got back to the village, he would do it properly, but he needed her magic with him now.

The others watched him in respectful silence, knowing without being told what he was doing. They would be as bound by the vision he sought as he would be himself. It was the way of things.

Standing Bear was inexorably drawn to the forest perimeter where the trail of wagons wound its way up the foothills toward the great mountains. He rode his pony along the line, carefully keeping to the trees so no one would spot him as he searched for the wagon Pale As Moonlight walked alongside. As he had yesterday, he wondered why she and her sister didn't have their own wagon. He frowned. He should know such things about her.

Then he saw her.

She walked along, arm in arm with her sister -- a beautiful but timid-looking creature. His eyes settled on Pale As Moonlight, and he just watched her for a long time, keeping pace in the shadows of the pine forest. Her walk was smooth and supple, like spring water flowing over the dusty trail beneath her feet. Her golden hair was mostly hidden by a cloth bonnet and he felt a knife-prick of impatience. He suddenly needed to see her hair falling free and loose over his arms, her pale skin reposing against the darkness of his own. He needed to feel her warm body nestled right up against him. He needed her taste swirling in his mouth.

Without thinking, he whistled to her.

She stopped short, yanking the other woman to a halt, and stared in his direction. A short, rapid discussion followed. Pale As Moonlight gave her sister a long hug, then broke free and sprang toward him. She tore the ugly bonnet from her head and flung it to the breeze. He smiled. It did his heart good to see the sun dancing in her eyes as she ran to him. Whatever happened after the Trading Day, he would always have the memory of the love in her eyes as she ran to him today.

Love. He slid from his pony, knowing the truth of it.

She loved him as surely as he wanted her with him.

He looked up to the sky and whispered a prayer that he would be allowed to keep her, always.

When he looked down again, she was standing a staff's length away, winded from running and gazing at him with her heart in her eyes. He smiled, and spread his arms, inviting her into his embrace.

Chapter Five

Today, Sally went to her lover with no uncertainty in her heart. Last night had shown her without a shadow of a doubt that she belonged with him. To him.

She had come West for a new life, far from the angry war raging in the East. She had never in her wildest imagination thought that her life was destined to be lived as an Indian captive -- in essence, a slave. To become the very thing men were fighting and dying over, to eradicate back home. Yet, she would embrace that new life, if it meant being with the man she loved.

"Standing Bear, " she whispered, and went into his arms. He appeared different today, his tall, powerful frame dressed only in a breechcloth and rippling muscles. "Have you come to take me away?"