A sudden cry ripped through her. He held dead still, feeling the violent shudder of her body, the sweetness of her release. He rose above her instantly, sinking into the liquid warmth of her. Amazingly, her eyes were open. Dazed. She closed them quickly at his gaze, gasping slightly again as she twisted her head. He caught her cheek with his thumb and forefinger, drew her back to face him. He didn’t care that her eyes were closed. He leaned to kiss her as he began to move with her. Taking her lips as he took her body. Hungrily. Savagely.
His climax was swift and violent. Ripping from his body. This time he was certain that he caused no pain, that he swept her with him. She trembled within his arms, and he held her close against him even as he eased himself from her, locked his arms around her, her back flush to his chest and groin, the red spill of her hair now between them, entangling them both.
She didn’t speak. She didn’t protest his being there. She didn’t even protest his hold on her.
She seemed to breathe raggedly for a long time. He wondered if she was crying, if she had been hurt. If she had gotten much more than she had ever imagined—or really wanted.
He could wonder forever, he thought. If she was crying, she would never let him see the tears.
He closed his own eyes, wondering at the surge of pain that suddenly seized him. He’d slept with women, Seminole and white, since Naomi’s death. But none of them innocent, and certainly none like Teela. He had slept with them because they had been available; he had slept with them casually. He barely remembered a name or a face, and he had not been expected to.
And he had never held any of them through the night. It was painful to do so now, but he could not let go. He tried to reason out his feelings for her, but there was no reasoning. It remained that he was obsessed. Foolishly so. There was nowhere to go from here.
He stared up at the ceiling and realized that something about her had changed. She hadn’t actually moved; she had softened, the tension slipping from her body.
Ah, yes. She slept, he thought ruefully. He eased from her, studying her in the moonlight.
“You have cast us both into the flames of hell!” he charged her softly. She didn’t stir. He touched her cheek and felt dampness there. He damned her, then damned himself.
But then he stretched close down beside her again. Slipped his arms around her. The future could not go gently for them.
It seemed imperative that he have the night to hold her.
* * *
Teela awoke to the soft sounds of knocking on her door.
She opened her eyes. James remained beside her, propped on an elbow, watching her. He had been awake for some time, she thought. And now, as the knocking continued, he remained dead still. Waiting. An ebony brow arched as he continued waiting, watching, a small smile just curving his lips.
“Oh!” Teela cried. She sat up, trying to draw the covers along with her. His body rested upon the sheet, and he smiled rather than free it. She thought for a moment that she had bedded down with a blue-eyed devil, and in that same moment her heart seemed to quicken. Being so suddenly awakened to the brilliant light of day was disturbing. She needed more darkness, more time. She might have dreamed her own behavior, it was so unbelievable. But of course she hadn’t dreamed—hadn’t dreamed him, his words, his touch. The thought of it made her tremble violently. Crimson flooded into her cheeks. She was deeply embarrassed because she knew very well that although he was by nature and design a demanding man who offered no quarter, she had wanted what had happened. Not consciously, perhaps. She could never have put all that happened last night into her conscious desires. But the temptation to touch had been there from the beginning. And seeing him now, handsome copper body whipcord lean and heavily muscled as he stretched upon the sheets, she could feel a certain shame but no remorse. She had wanted him. She hadn’t begun to imagine what might be found in his arms; nothing so intimate had ever played within her mind.
The knocking sounded again.
“Please?” she whispered desperately.
Something flashed into his eyes. An understanding that caused her heart further dismay. She was not so horrified herself at what had happened, but she didn’t want to be caught. Warren’s unmarried daughter with a man. Not just a man. A half-breed. It was one thing to play. Another to be caught.
“T’s Jeeves with tea, Miss Warren,” came a soft, clear voice. “Mrs. McKenzie is going riding this morning and thought you might like to join her, and so I apologize for waking you.”
She leapt out of the bed, reaching for her gown, discovering it torn and ragged. She spun again to stare at James. He was still smiling, but he had risen. With a fluid motion he pulled on his breeches. He moved silently across the room and quietly opened one of the wardrobes in the room where her things had been hung by one of his brother’s upstairs maids, and he found a cotton robe to toss to her and stepped just outside on the balcony.
She was tempted to lock the doors behind him, but Jeeves knocked softly again. “Miss Warren?”
“Yes, yes…”
She flew across the room and opened the door. The tea tray looked heavy. She flushed with a bit of guilt.
“The table there, by the window, will be fine. Thank you very much. And tell Mrs. McKenzie that of course I would love to ride with her.”
“I will indeed, Miss Warren.” He started to leave the room but hesitated at the doorway.
“Mr. McKenzie,” he said softly, his back still toward her so that Teela stared around him, wondering if Jarrett was outside in the hallway.
But Jarrett wasn’t outside, and Jeeves wasn’t addressing him but the younger McKenzie, who stood just outside the balcony doors. “I’ve taken the liberty of bringing two cups. And I’ve informed your brother and sister-in-law that you did not leave Cimmaron last night, but decided late to stay another night. Since you weren’t in your room this morning, I thought perhaps you’d decided to join Miss Warren for a bit of breakfast, and again, I apologize for the intrusion, but the household is up and moving.”
Jeeves stepped out of the room. Teela continued to stare at the door after it closed, astounded. She heard a soft noise behind her. Before Teela had spun around, James had stepped back in from the balcony. Feeling pale and breathless, she kept her distance from him, staring at him from the opposite side of the table.
“My God!” she whispered.
He helped himself to a piece of toast, straddling one of the slim upholstered chairs at the table. “Jeeves is the very soul of discretion, Miss Warren. You need have no fears that he will tarnish your reputation.”
“I don’t—I don’t care about my reputation.”
“No?” he inquired tauntingly. The blue eyes on her now were cold, his voice sounded hard.
“You’ve no right to keep judging me!”
“Why the horror that you should be discovered?”
“Because it just—isn’t done.”
“I beg to differ. It’s done frequently.”
She moaned softly, then jumped when he seemed to rise with the swift, graceful leap of a panther to come around to her. She tried to back away; he caught her wrist. “Will you just sit, please?” he demanded. He pulled her forward, drew out the second chair. Both hands on her shoulders, he pressed her down into it. “Shall I pour you tea?”
“I can manage.”
“Good. I’ll have mine with cream and sugar. A luxury, of course In my customary savage life I make do with black chicory coffee.”
“Will you stop that?” she hissed, sitting forward, fingers trembling only slightly as she strained their tea. She poured out cream and sugar mechanically, and started to hand him his cup. She went dead still, more blood draining from her face.
James turned to see what had so dismayed her. She had seen the snow white bed sheet, dotted with lost innocence.
To Teela’s surprise, he rose and stripped off the offending sheet, knotting it into a small bundle. He left it on his chair and walked to the door, opening it cautiously, then di
sappeared into the hallway. She stared after him, thinking they had both lost their minds.
But a moment later he was back, a clean folded sheet in his hands, which he cast upon the bed before taking his chair again and picking up his cup. He took a sip of his tea. “No bitterness intended, but I do most often make my bed beneath the pines. You will surely be more adept at remaking that bed than I.”
She stared at him, amazed at the hot sting of tears that threatened to flood her eyes. She looked down at the table and nodded. He was such a strange man. Cold one minute, mocking her again, maybe even hating her still in his way. She seemed all the more the pampered southern belle this morning who longed for the excitement of the game with none of the repercussions. The dangerous thrill to be had … without the payment.
“I’m sorry,” he said huskily after a moment, startling her again. She stared up at him. His eyes were still very hard. “I shouldn’t have followed you back in here. No, that’s not what I mean. I shouldn’t have … taken you.”
She was sure that a more graphic word had been on the tip of his tongue; he had pulled it back. She shook her head.
“If I could go back—”
She lifted her chin. “If I could go back, Mr. McKenzie, there is nothing I would have done differently,” she said, her words cool and smooth. But her eyes fell at the last, and she found herself picking up her teacup for something to do with herself.
But he was up again, and surprisingly on one knee by the side of her chair, reaching for her hands. “Ah, Teela!” he said, smiling, but it seemed that his smile was rueful now, and that he didn’t mean to taunt her in the least. “What would your young fiancé have to say to that?”
“I am not engaged.”
“Major Warren intends that you should be.”
“Major Warren has intended many things.”
“John Harrington is a good man, a friend,” James said, and he felt a pang of anguish harden his voice. Yes, Harrington was a good man, a friend. And he was white from his light hair to his pale toe, a military man, Warren’s chosen for his daughter.
He felt uncomfortably as if he’d betrayed a friend.
“I liked Mr. Harrington,” Teela said evenly, her eyes narrowing with smoldering anger. “He does indeed seem to be a fine man. We have both agreed on that point, I believe.”
“You laughed easily enough when you danced with him,” James said. Of course, she hadn’t looked at Harrington the way that Harrington had looked at her.
“What has this to do with anything?” she demanded.
“Damn it, Teela!” he swore. He stood, pacing to the open balcony windows. “What do you think can happen, where do we go from here? I’m not Harrington. It’s not as if you carried on a small indiscretion with a proper young man, a proper young white man. The damage cannot be easily reversed with a proper white wedding.”
She stood up, staring at him. “I’ve not asked you for anything, and I don’t want anything—other than that you let this alone!” she told him angrily.
“Mmm. In an evening your curiosity is satisfied, and it’s quite fine that I run back into my swamp?”
“I don’t give a damn where you go, but I really wish you’d vacate my room now since you are so intent on being so damned offensive!”
He left the window, coming her way with his panther strides. She started to back away. Too little, too late. His hands were on her shoulders. “Damn you, stop this game. Passions run too deep, blood runs too deep …”
But then his voice trailed away. His fingers threaded into her hair, he pulled her close. She brought her hands against his chest to shove away, but she felt the copper fire of his naked chest, the thunder of his heart.
His lips crushed down upon hers, passionately, bruisingly. She wanted to hate him, to be furious. She wanted to fight him. She felt instead the simmering spiral of longing rising within her, hot fire that defied all other emotion. She felt the tempest of his lips and his touch, the heat of his mouth, his tongue, his steel-muscled frame.
She should have fought him. But she didn’t. And he released her quite suddenly, his fingers still threaded in her hair as he mocked her.
“Oh, excuse me, you did want me out of your room, didn’t you, Miss Warren? Well, then, I must behave like a civilized being, and remember that I am half white.”
His hands fell from her. He bent low in a mocking, graceful bow.
Then he spun on bare feet and strode firmly toward the balcony doors. He paused briefly to snatch up the discarded sheet from the chair.
Then he disappeared into the bright glare of the morning sunlight.
Chapter 7
“I could swear I said good-bye to you last night,” Jarrett told James, joining him in the library.
James, in a white shirt and dark breeches, sat behind his brother’s desk, only the doeskin boots he wore a departure from the latest European fashion. His legs were extended atop the desk, ankles crossed. He leaned back, a brandy snifter in his hand, amber liquid swirling within it, a somber expression on his face.
Before he could reply, Jarrett told him hastily, “Not that I am not glad to see you here. Every time you ride out these days, my heart seems to jam in my throat again for fear I’ll never see you again.”
James smiled, lifting his glass to his brother. “Thank you for that sentiment, Jarrett. You are a damned good brother.”
Jarrett took a seat on the edge of the desk. “Why the brooding?”
James shook his head, paused, seeking an answer in his own mind. “There are times when I feel that I can function, that I can play my part in all this, follow my conscience, and come out perhaps not only alive but sane. But I was just thinking now how easy my life is at this moment. I come here and eat good food. My revenue from the lands we share keeps me well clothed. But I have run with warrior bands when they have been forced to move their villages, their old, their women, and their children. I have watched children grow skeletal for lack of food, and I haven’t the power to feed them all. Now I sit in your fine leather chair, and there is no threat to my back when I look out at the beauty of your lawn and the river. I have had the luxury of giving you my daughter. But then again, I cannot simply stay here. I cannot forget Mary, the ways I was taught as a boy.”
“There is not a minute that I do not worry about Mary in all this,” Jarrett said tensely.
“I know that you worry, that you are every bit as good a son to her as I am. But you can’t change the fact that you are all white. I can’t change the fact that I am not. I can’t forget my friends, my people. When the white soldiers threaten the villages, I find myself in the fight. I’ve tried so damned hard never to deny anything that I am … and as I have said, sometimes I function. I can carry on a conversation with any of your dinner guests, I can be the intriguing oddity at your socials. I can join the parleys with the American generals and agents, and I can, better than most, translate the truth of all the words and the falsehoods of the promises to both the whites and the Seminoles. But there are days when I feel that it will soon cost me my soul.”
Jarrett stared at him a moment. “I think I need a brandy, too,” he told his brother, and walked to the small table where the crystal decanter and snifters were kept. He poured himself a small portion, paused, doubled it. He leaned against his desk again, facing James. “It’s got to end soon.”
James shook his head. “No. Think on it, Jarrett, before it all began. You tried to warn the white brass what was coming. Hell, all the Indians were trading their otter pelts for gunpowder. Lots of warriors were planning this. You yourself said that the treaty of Moultrie Creek was an abomination, but it was supposed to have stood for another nine years. It wasn’t to be. Too many Indian lands just looked too damn good. Wiley Thompson chained Osceola, Osceola murdered Thompson, and Dade and his men were massacred. Now we have General Thomas Sydney Jesup. He scares me the most. Jesup has come in with the determination to remove all red men from Tampa Bay to the Withlacoochee. He has realized what kind
of a fight he has on his hand—that he must find the manpower to hold his forts and depots and still have enough soldiers left to pursue his enemy into the swampland. He’s doing one hell of a job of it. He keeps his men in the field. I know his problems with the volunteers and militia who have poured in from the southern states. I’ve heard how some of them came with such bold courage and raw nerve and lost it when the owls hooted in the night and the wolves bayed at the moon. But Jesup is damned good at moving himself. He is a sharp, intelligent man. I understand he and Winfield Scott are now all but bitter enemies over his movement in the Creek War, but from the viewpoint of an enemy, Jesup’s speed and preparedness far surpass Scott’s!” He lifted his hands. “Many of the warriors signed the truce this spring—believing that they did so in Micanopy’s name. It was then that your newspapers so viciously attacked the man because he stipulated that the Indians and their allies would be free in the west, the allies being the Negros who are free men here or who have become slaves of the Indians here. Too many white men were too damned determined to have their blacks returned to them.”
“There are black bands among the Seminoles,” Jarrett reminded him. “Many people were afraid that their former slaves would be attacking them in their towns and cities.”
“I know,” James said softly. “But can you blame the former slaves who have found freedom? What man will willingly give it up after he has tasted it?”
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