Running Wild

by Denise Eagan

  “Are you cold? I’ll build a fire.”

  His eyes were almost black against the background of snow and ice, holding hers steadily. For a second she didn’t answer, content to drink it all in. Then he flashed her his blinding smile, and she couldn’t think. “Yeah, your face is a tad red. You need a fire. I could use some coffee, myself.”

  Her face wasn’t red from cold, as he must readily perceive, but from excitement.

  “I come fishin’ here in the warmer weather,” he continued, striding to the edge of the forest. He bent over a pile of wood stacked there. “I try to keep some firewood around in case I want a fire.”

  She was quite warm just watching him.

  After a minute or two of gathering wood and bringing it into the center of the clearing, he raised his eyebrows. “You wouldn’t wanna, help, would you? Fetch me a couple of those rocks over there to ring the fire. Don’t want it to spread accidentally. We’ve got plenty of snow, but it doesn’t take too much to start a forest fire.”

  She took a breath and nodded. For a time they worked in silence. When he’d gathered enough wood, he handed Star his rifle—it was far heavier than she’d have imagined—and knelt on one knee to build the fire. She watched silently, marveling at his efficiency; he only used one match. Tilting his head, he blew on the baby flames, bringing the birch bark to a crackling roar. She gulped. How would it feel, she wondered, to be that bark, to feel his breath warm on her neck, in her ears. . .

  She’d burst into flames, too.

  He added kindling, followed by larger and larger pieces of wood, and as he did, she could feel passion’s fire building inside of her. At length, he rose and turned to her to take his rifle back. He was so near to her that his pine and leather scent wafted under her nose, through her lungs and into her heart. His lovely mouth was just inches away. Temptation burned away all common sense. She reached up to curl one hand around his neck, while bringing her mouth up to his.

  At first his lips were cold—cold and motionless. Ignoring his stiffening muscles, she moved her mouth lightly over his, then oh-so-gently applied pressure. With the smallest of groans, he succumbed. His arm circled her waist, pulling her against him, and he kissed her back. His tongue pried open her lips to surge inside.

  She melted.

  The flush from her face spread down to her fingers and toes, then upward again, a wondrous tingling that washed all thought from her brain. His tongue swept through her mouth, touching, tasting, inviting her inside. Desire flowed through her body, pooling in those soft areas down below. Closing her eyes, she sank into sensation as his left hand drifted over the curve of her waist, then higher—

  He stiffened suddenly. His mouth slid to her neck. “Hold still,” he rasped in her ear.

  Hold still? What? Hold what still?

  His breath was a whisper against her cheek. “Don’t move, not a muscle.”

  His hand was coasting along her waist, and then covered her hand. His heat penetrated her gloves, and she trembled, closing her eyes in an attempt to recapture that incredible thoughtlessness—

  He tugged at something in her hand. The rifle.

  “Hold on tight, I have to cock it,” he whispered.

  Cock? What?—vulgarity. . .

  “Good, now release the rifle. I’m going to count to three. When I reach three, you hunt grass. Go to your right.”

  Hunt grass?

  “One—two—three!”

  She didn’t have to hunt anything. He shoved her aside and she fell, barely reacting fast enough to save herself from a severe bruising.

  The rifle exploded above her, and Star bit back a gasp of shock as the sound echoed through the valley. Slowly, she rolled over to regard Nicholas. In the haze of bemusement, her mind registered a click followed by another explosion. The pungent smell of gun smoke floated in the air.

  “Got it!” he exclaimed triumphantly. He looked down, smiling as he offered her a hand. “You O.K.? Hope I didn’t push too hard.”

  “I’m not certain,” she said, taking his hand and rising. “How hard is too hard?”

  “That’s the spirit,” he said with another quick grin. Dropping her hand, he took several long strides to the edge of the pond where a very large yellow cat lay. Good gracious, it was a mountain lion! A very dead mountain lion, too, for blood seeped from its head and chest, turning the snow pink, then red.

  Nicholas squatted down next to it, his back to her, his pants pulled tight against his rear end, his coat molding his broad back. His muscular shoulders were attached to equally muscular arms, which had been wrapped around her seconds before he’d shot his rifle and killed something that no doubt wished to kill them. Quite suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. . . .

  Foolish notion, she thought sucking in air. Of course she could breathe. She was Star Montgomery. Virginia Star Montgomery, daughter of Boston Brahmin Ward Montgomery, descendant of a long line of very well-breathing Montgomerys. Situations—men—did not affect her this way.

  But no one had ever before saved her life.

  Surely, though, Nicholas had done no such thing, for what had the cat against them that it would try to kill them? At any rate, it was too far away to pounce, she admonished her stupid, tight lungs. No doubt it had merely been wandering through the clearing, minding its own business, and Nicholas had shot the poor creature to prove his masculinity.

  “Just like I thought,” he said smugly. “It was mad. See the foam around its mouth.” He turned to her as he motioned to its mouth, hanging open. “Rabies, and in the late stages too. Not in its right mind, or it’d never have come near us, ’specially during the day.”

  Rabid. Her heart skipped a beat. He had saved her life.

  Deep, primal excitement burst through her, then flowed downward reigniting the embers of desire in her belly. It felt good, and so her mind repeated the phrase. He saved me. More excitement, followed by little thrills in the soft area between her thighs.

  He lifted his head and his eyebrows gathered into a bemused frown. “It’s dead. There’s no cause for fear,” he soothed.

  Yes there was, and oh, how that fear added to desire, like kerosene to a fire.

  “I’m not afraid,” Star replied.

  No, Nick thought, holding her gaze, she wasn’t afraid. She was exhilarated. It shot across the clearing to hit him square in the chest, and then drove downward to where lust resided. A harsh, writhing lust, the kind a man felt for whores, maybe even for a wife, but never for a died-in-the-wool suffragette. Not for the noble-blooded daughter of a Boston aristocrat. ’Specially not for the daughter of a friend.

  A friend that reminded him of his father.

  For a second, disgust at his sick cravings displaced the lust. Then he remembered that Ward Montgomery wasn’t his father. Ward’d never even met Pa.

  “Anyhow,” he said standing, while wrangling with the urge to cross the clearing, drag her into his arms and kiss her again until they were both breathless. “I don’t reckon you can get rabies from a dead animal, but I’ll leave the pelt all the same. Not worth the chance.” He glanced down at the animal, shaking his head. “Tho’ it’s a shame. Would’ve made a nice little coat for Sam.”

  “Your niece? Yes, I imagine it would,” Star said with a hiccup of a laugh, “but I appreciate you not making the attempt.”

  When he focused on her again, she wore a grimace of revulsion, mocking the merriment sparkling in her eyes. He grinned. “I bet with what was left, Melinda could sew you a nice hand muff to bring back to Boston. Show off to all your highfalutin’ friends.”

  She chuckled, a warm, gentle tickle to his ears. “Thank you, Nicholas, but I much rather not bring that back to my friends—although I’m certain they would be very impressed—if it means watching you skin that unfortunate beast.”

  He pushed back his hat and squinted at her in mock concentration. “You sure?”

  “I’m positive.”

  He chuckled and righted his hat again. “O.K., then I’ll get that java
going. It’s long past lunch time and I’m starved,” he said moving toward his horse. “Mack packed the beans in your bag. If you get that, I’ll fetch the sandwiches and cookies Melinda made.”

  Her eyes flickered over the cat. She bit her lip. “He’s staring at me.”

  Amusement tickled his chest. “She—it’s a female. Want me to throw a tarp over it?”

  She arched one silky eyebrow and his heart skipped a beat. Sonuvabitch, what was it about that movement that stole his attention every time?

  “Do you have one? It would help.”

  “Sure. Never travel without something to keep the weather off, not in these parts, anyhow.”

  A short while later they were eating in comfortable silence, a fire crackling between them. Nick’d dragged more wood from the pile and periodically fed it to the fire. The heat turned Miz Montgomery’s face a pretty shade of red, reminding him of the color it’d been right before she’d kissed him.

  No. No, no, no, he was not riding down that road. Never mind that her wildcat eyes kept straying to his mouth as if she wanted another taste. Forget that they were alone in the woods, and nobody would ever know if he kissed her again and built a big enough fire so that when he pulled up those skirts—

  No. He formed one hand into a fist. He’d keep the fire between them and anything else he could think of, too, to keep his distance and maybe smother the hunger down below. A good man didn’t fool with his friend’s daughter, no matter that her family let her run wild. He was a crude Western rancher. She was the daughter of a Boston aristocrat. Nothing good could come from this.

  “You sure recovered from your fear fast,” he said to keep his mind off what neither one of them was going to do.

  She shrugged as she washed down a bite of sandwich with coffee. Black as sin and thick as mud, cowboy coffee. She’d made a face after the first sip, but had valiantly drunk it without complaint. For all her blue blood, she had a deal of spunk. And spunk in bed—

  “Why, Nicholas,” she answered him, thankfully cutting off that thought, “I no longer have any reason to be afraid. You’ve proven very capable of protecting me.” Her eyes sparkling, she fluttered her lashes like she was a lost, helpless young girl, entirely dependent on him and his big, strong arms. But the woman was just a few inches shy of his six feet, and she didn’t have a helpless muscle in that tall, lush body. The expression oughta have looked ridiculous on her. It didn’t and damned if it didn’t touch his fool pride. And stir the embers of lust—“It was a pretty easy shot,” he said, and ruthlessly buried those thoughts, once and for all. “Not like the animal was hiding or moving fast. Mostly a mercy killing.”

  “Oh no, you’re being far too modest, sir. I understand that rabid animals are quite unpredictable.”

  “Yeah, like women,” he said with a smirk.

  She burst into laughter, vanquishing that little-girl-lost expression. “Game, set, match,” she said. “You are the most terrifying man, Nicholas McGraw! Swear to me, sir, that you never shoot women merely for being unpredictable, for upon my honor, I am all a twitter at the notion!”

  He grinned and shook his head as he took the pot off the coals. He poured the last dregs into the snow. “Well you can set your mind—and your twitterin’—to rest. They hang ya for killing women, even if sometimes that’d be a mercy killin’, too. Mercy for the man, that is.”

  She lifted her eyebrows, over large, laughing eyes. “Now, Nicholas, you must know that as a women’s rights advocate, I am all but required to object to that statement. As women are legally and socially at men’s whims, how much misery can one woman cause?”

  He squinted at her. “You serious? You never saw a woman cause a man misery?”

  For a moment she appeared to try to school her face into solemnity. She lost the battle and broke into a smile. “All right, I confess that some women are shrews. Many men are horrible, as well, however. You must admit that.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do,” he said standing and smiling down at her. “There are a few men I’d like to shoot, too. Now, if you drink that coffee on down, we’d better head on back. I don’t like the look of that sky. Could be snow, and we don’t want to get caught up here in a storm.”

  ***

  They rode for half an hour with little comment, as Nicholas carefully guided them down a steep, single-file path. Star focused her body on the movements of the horse while her brain traveled an entirely different path, one of marvel over the rabid animal and the wonder of Nicholas’s kiss. By and by, however, it settled upon Nicholas’s ultimate disregard of that kiss. After shooting the mountain lion, he’d said nothing at all about the kiss, behaving as if it had not occurred. Had she been too brash? She was no fool; she knew she was not every man’s style: too tall, too mannish, too aggressive and, oh, a hundred different things a man might dislike in a woman. Doubtless, a strong woman would not intimidate a man with Nicholas’s strength and confidence, but that didn’t mean he wanted one. Possibly he was the sort who was attracted to opposites. Quite possibly, she thought, her spirits sinking, he, like most men, preferred women who were quiet and demure.

  She couldn’t even feign that.

  She had, however, feigned other characteristics for her many fiancés, which had led to some rather stimulating encounters. Like Leander Cushing who, believing her wide-eyed sexual naiveté, had, in the frenzy of introducing her to passion, come close to taking her innocence . . . right before demanding marriage. And Ambrose Thompson, who’d been fervently attracted to her little-girl-lost magic, determined to protect her from the big bad world, and in the process of “comforting” her, had brought her to her first climax. To be fair to Ambrose, though, the little-girl-lost façade hadn’t been all pretense. He’d started pursuing right after Minnie’s death, when she had been lost.

  She swallowed and shook off that memory.

  At any rate, it was too late for pretense with Nicholas. From the moment they’d met, she’d shown him her true self, which, she must now accept, repelled him. True, he had responded to her kiss, but that must be merely an instinctual male reaction or he would have followed through afterward. She’d been deluding herself, drat it all, in believing that he felt this connection between them. Instead of a short, feverish liaison like she’d hoped, she’d spend the next weeks in frustration.

  Ah well, she thought with a light sigh, she might yet salvage something from the afternoon. If she could not enjoy Nicholas’s physical attentions, then she might enjoy his conversation. She’d mourn the rest later, in the privacy of her room.

  The trail widened again, giving them the chance to ride side by side. “Do you know Nicholas,” she ventured, “it has occurred to me how handy you are with that rifle. I suppose that if you hadn’t accompanied me, that mountain lion would have eaten me.”

  He regarded her swiftly, scarcely long enough for her to mark a gleam of amusement in his blue eyes. “Pro’bly not, ma’am. Might’ve bitten you, tho’. I expect you’d have escaped it after that, being the kinda woman you are.”

  Because, no doubt, he believed that she so resembled a man in size and spirit that she did not want a man to help her out of a scrape. “I suspect being bitten is not precisely a delight,” she answered, trying to keep her voice light. It didn’t work—her disappointment turned the lightness to acid.

  This time when he looked at her, he didn’t turn away. His eyes, in fact, were warmly appraising, running the length of her body before settling on her face again. “I reckon, ma’am, you’d‘ve tossed the beast off straightaway, then clubbed it with the nearest tree branch, but good,” he said, in a voice traced with respect and admiration. “It’d have killed you all the same.”

  The way his eyes touched her—it didn’t feel like sexual indifference. To be sure, when she combined it with the tone of his voice, his gaze actually conveyed warm, masculine appreciation. “Surely not if I received medical attention fairly quickly? I am not that delicate, after all, Nicholas,” she pointed out, her heart skipping a beat
as she waited for his reaction.

  His lips twitched. “No, ma’am, you aren’t, but that animal was rabid, and a bite from a rabid animal is well-nigh a death sentence. Can’t say I’ve ever seen a rabid-ridden man, but I’ve heard of the affects. It’s a mighty miserable way to die.”

  “Ah, so then your rifle did save me, didn’t it? You know,” she said slowly as her mind latched onto a scheme to get him alone again, just in case she was wrong about his interest. “I believe I should like to learn how to shoot one.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Shoot? No, ma’am, no good reason for you to learn that. Long as you’re in Colorado, I can—” He paused. “We can, protect you.”

  “And when I leave?” she said with a small laugh. “Although you’ve not seen many rabid men in Colorado, I assure you I’ve met at least half a dozen in Boston and Newport, never mind New York!”

  Including, a sudden voice flashed through her brain, one secret admirer.

  Ridiculous. Romeo adored her. He was shy, not rabid. She’d experienced far more harm from the men who actively fought the movement, than from a secret admirer who confined his antipathy to gently-written scolding.

  “Well, now that I come to study on it,” he reasoned out loud, “I have heard some pretty rough stories about New York. Five Points and those gangs and all. Still, though, I reckon totin’ a rifle to all your balls and parties might cause gossip,” he finished his voice marbled with amusement.

  “Oh no, how can you say so? I should quickly make it all the rage. You’ve no idea how hard New Yorkers try to outdo each other with odd and extravagant behavior. I should, I believe, have my rifle incrusted with jewels!”

  He chuckled. “That’d set if off balance, and you’d never again get a clean shot.”

  “Is that so? I never knew that, since, of course, I’ve never shot one. Now, seriously, Nicholas, I should like to learn. Promise you’ll teach me, won’t you?”

  Nicholas glanced her way speculatively. “It’s not an easy thing to learn. You’d do best to find other matters to occupy your time in Colorado.”