The Ruination of Essie Sparks (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 2) (20 page)

"Yes," he said. "That one."

"Well." She exhaled sharply, looking away so he wouldn't see what was in her eyes. "Don't flatter yourself. Because the only thing we actually have in common is the fact that we both care about that boy and want to keep him safe. Believe me, the sooner you and I can part ways, the better."

He was silent so long that she actually looked back at him. Some fierceness had crept into his expression as his gaze slid down her features, filled with emotions he couldn't seem to formulate into words.

"So, if we're finished here—" she began, pulling away from him, but he caught her by the shoulders and pressed her back up against the pine tree.

"We're not."

Her eyes widened because, land sakes, he was scaring her a little now. She glanced to either side of her to see if help was on its way. Of course, none was. So she pinned him with a look that dared him to challenge her.

Instead, he shook his head, and dropped his mouth on hers and showed her exactly what kind of challenge he could mount.

Chapter 12

His mouth crushed against hers without gentleness, as if trying to prove something about his own brutality. But what she felt, instead, was his wildness. His loneliness. Some aching need for connection. His tongue pillaged her mouth without invitation, but she had no desire to deny him. She wanted to feel his mouth against hers, inhale his breath and taste his kiss again. He could deny all he wanted that something good had sparked between them, but this kiss was all the proof she required that the opposite was true.

Dragging her hard against him until they fitted one another like blades of grass, he sank his fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck. A sound of need echoed against her mouth that only stirred the embers heating inside her.

The coil at the center of her tightened and every nerve ending came alive. His kisses were nothing like Nathan's had been—chaste, Presbyterian efforts of duty. And while this kiss had more passion than Nathan could ever have mustered, it was, she could tell, meant to end things between them. But if ending things was his intention, his plan backfired miserably. Dampness blossomed, unbidden, at the juncture of her legs and her nipples ached against the fabric of her shift. She felt herself melting against him as he punished her mouth with his kiss and the evidence of his own hunger pushed up hard against her belly.

Then, as if he'd only just realized how far out of bounds that kiss had gone, he tugged her head backward, breaking the kiss, his control wrecked and his expression more than a little lost. He took a step away from her, rubbing his palms on his thighs. "That..." he said, his breath coming hard, "is why we cannot be together. That can never happen again."

Outrage darkened her expression. "You kissed
me
!"

"And you kissed me back."

Clutching the tree behind her, she stiffened. Feeling dizzy and bruised by his kiss, his words cut her deeply. She was in no mood for rejection, especially when it came from the man who'd
kidnapped
her. Against her will, her eyes filled with tears. "What did you expect, then? A paper cut-out in your arms? A woman who couldn't, or wouldn't, kiss you back? Did you think to scare me off if I should dare try to? How very male of you!"

He loosed an oath and spun away from her. "You have no idea what you're playing with, Essie."

"If anyone is playing games here, it's you."

He turned back to her. "Do you think that kiss meant nothing to me? That you mean nothing to me?"

"I don't know. Do I?"

A sound of frustration vibrated in his throat and he took her by the shoulders and dragged her close to him. "You do not seem to grasp your situation."

"My situation?" She let out a bark of laughter. "You mean, mine alone? Yes, I'm quite sure the past few days of running for our lives across the dangerous mountains of Montana, nearly drowning, almost falling off a thousand-foot plateau and now, taking refuge in an encampment of enemy Cheyenne who should, by rights, despise me—if all that wasn't enough to convince me that at any moment the sky could fall, the earth could drop out from under me and/or I could die"—she shrugged off his hands—"perhaps the whole thing is, indeed, beyond my grasp. After all, if losing a child and a husband in the same year didn't send me into a darkened room for the rest of my days, or the very idea of walking away from everything I'd known to risk a whole new life in the wilds of Montana Territory couldn't kill me, or wake me up to the dangers of moving forward in my life, God knows what will."

"You may think you know," he said, looming over her, "what the future holds for a white woman returned from captivity in this country, but I assure you, you don't. If you think you were alone before, you've never known aloneness. The few who manage to survive are locked away for the rest of their lives, or at the very least, shunned. No respectable white man will have you. You're spoiled. Ruined. Probably crazy. Certainly violated."

She glared at him. "Oh, how disappointed they'd be to know no such thing had happened." He pressed her back against the tree and she could feel the sharp edges of the bark through his shirt.

"But I've wanted it to. It was all I could do last night not to rip that blanket away from you and pull you under me. Touch you"—his fingers slid down the side of her face, then drifted down her chest to the tip of her right nipple, underneath the shirt he'd given her—"everywhere. Taste your skin on my tongue. Slide myself inside you and feel your slick warmth around me until you moaned with pleasure."

She lifted her chin, her breath coming quick and shallow. "And why didn't you?"

He blinked back the rest of what he'd been about to say and stared at her.

"I thought so." She turned and walked away from him, but he caught her with his hand.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Never mind."

"Tell me." His voice sounded breathless now, the way she felt.

"You talk about fear, as if I'm the only one who has something to lose here. But I think it's you who's afraid, Cade."

"That's a dangerous thing to say to the man who's kidnapped you."

"Perhaps. If I were afraid of him. If he hadn't protected me since that first moment, with his own life. But I'm not afraid of you, Cade. And I'm no girl. I'm a woman fully grown. So don't pretend that thinking of me as your hostage to push me away is for my sake. At least admit it's for yours."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Then I guess there's nothing else to say, is there?" This time, she tugged her arm from his grip and headed back across camp, leaving him behind her.

* * *

Cade didn't follow her. Instead, he limped downstream, following the water as it made its way downhill. Each step a burning reminder that he deserved to be alone.

Séaa!

What a fool he'd been to kiss her again. In all the years since Delilah had cut him, never once had he allowed himself to touch a proper white girl, much less the days he'd spent with his arms wrapped around this one. Except that when he was near her, all he wanted to do was what he had just done. And more. Maybe he had used that kiss to push her away. Maybe he thought he'd scare her, or anger her. Which he had. But he'd never intended the kiss to backfire on him the way it had, nor send want crushing through him like a herd of buffalo. Had he not already damaged her enough? Had he not taken away every shred of dignity she owned?

"Don't pretend that thinking of me as your hostage to push me away is for my sake. At least admit it's for yours."

At least about that, she'd been right. He
was
afraid of what might happen with a woman like her. Risking all the things she made him crave was not on the table for him. She could go on about his reluctance to move forward in his life, but she didn't know him. Didn't know what he'd been through or what had made him who he was. If she did...

Walks Along Woman appeared a few feet ahead, scrubbing some laundry by the creek. She looked up when she heard him coming. He pivoted and began walking back the way he'd come.

She spoke to him in Cheyenne. "Have you learned the manners of the
vé'ho'e
since you left us, Black Thorn? Do you not stop to say hello to your oldest cousin?"

He turned back to her with a regretful shake of his head. "Forgive me, cousin. Good morning."

She nodded, wishing him the same before turning back to her work.

He stared downstream, feeling awkward, like the boy he'd been when last they'd been together. "I am in your debt once again. Thank you for taking us in."

"You would do no less for us." She studied him. "How is your leg today? Has the heat left it?"

He rubbed his thigh without thinking. "It's better. Much better."

"Rest is a healer."

He couldn't argue that. "Your poultice is what helped most."

Pleased, she said, "The old ways still work, in spite of the whites' attempts to rub them out of us." She let her gaze slide up his considerable size. "I still see my sister's son in your eyes, but you have changed, Black Thorn. Grown dark. A thunderhead cloud carries less trouble than you," she said, turning back to the rock she was washing upon. "Is it that white woman of yours?"

"Her name is Essie. And she is not—" He stopped short of what he'd been about to say as Walks Along Woman glanced up at him in expectation. "She is not like them."

Walks Along nodded with a small smile. "She is not a sheep like most of the white women I've seen. That much is plain."

His face heated, realizing she must have heard them fighting.

She smiled knowingly. "Red Moon and I have shared blankets for so long, he knows all my crooked paths and how to pick his way around them." She smiled up at him. "But that is because we are both old now and have put many disagreements behind us."

He lowered himself onto a rock beside her and stared out over the water. Across the way, the branches of a low-hanging shrub floated on the ruffled water. The music of the creek sang along the surface of the rocks hidden just underneath.

"She belongs to herself, not me," he admitted. "We are not meant for each other."

"Why not?"

"Because..." He faltered, unable to articulate the exact problem.

"Because she is not a Human Being?" Walks Along shrugged. "Your heart also pumps with white blood, cousin. And yet, our world is also yours."

"It is not the same. Her world cannot be mine. Not anymore."

She turned to him fully now. "You were born to straddle both worlds. Both the Human Beings' world and the white one. This will always be so. To deny that part of you is like asking a fish to deny his scales because they only run smooth in one direction. Without them, what would protect him from the sharp rocks in the river? Or the fox that wants to eat him?"

"It is my father, and not me, who denies that part of me."

She patted his hand, then squeezed out the shirt she was washing. "I think you are wrong. I knew your father. He was good to your mother and she loved him. It is true, she missed her life with us. But your father let her come with you every summer. And every autumn, even after her death—until we were moved to the Territories—your father would cut twenty cows from his herds to be delivered to us. Their meat kept us alive after the buffalo disappeared. And when we returned from the long walk from the hard place, nearly starved, those twenty cows appeared again one morning. A gift from him."

Shock filtered through him. "
What
? How did I not know this? I always thought those cattle were from the agency."

She snorted. "The agency? We were lucky to get scraps, what the agents didn't steal for themselves or sell. They have done their best to starve us with their lies. Without your father, many of us would have died. His only request was that you should not learn of his generosity."

He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "But why?"

"He is as stubborn as you, cousin. You know why, I think."

Because he didn't want Cade's bad opinion of him swayed by a good deed. He wanted Cade to forgive him on his own. The memory of their falling out still pained him, when he allowed himself to think of it. His father's leap to judgment still burned him like a hot coal. Yet it somehow surprised him to imagine that his father must feel the same sort of pain as well.