“White,” he supplied. “No taint of Indian blood in you.” He ran a dark finger over her arm, the contrast undeniable. She raised her eyes to his again, and he finished softly. “Completely beautiful. Totally irresistible.”
They were silent a moment before he went on. “Are you sure that this—that I’m—what you want, Callie?” His voice was low, and for a moment, Callie thought she heard a hint of mocking vulnerability there. She had lowered her eyes, but at his tone, she met his piercing look head-on.
“I’m sure.” There was no momentary pause, no hesitation in her response.
Jax rolled over, covering her body with his own. He was deliciously warm, Callie thought. And hard. She became very aware of his bulging arousal against the silk underwear she wore.
“You better tell me, then, Callie. Say what you want.” His breath brushed her ear, as he held her wrists pinioned to the bed. He slowly moved to nibble at her full lower lip, and she whimpered softly, her hips grinding upward into him.
“I-I don’t know how,” she moaned breathlessly against his mouth. “Don’t know the words. I want you, Jax. It’s all I know.” How stupid he would think she was! But it was true. She really didn’t know any word for what they were about to do other than the one the preacher had used one Sunday—the one Tildy Rienholdt had used with such relish. Fornication. And that was too ugly to say, certainly not what she felt for Jax right now. Callie ground her hips upward across his male hardness once more, and he gritted his teeth. “Wh-What are the words Jaxson?” she asked softly. “So I’ll know what to ask for?”
****
Jax couldn’t move for a long, hot moment. I want you, she had said, and somehow, he knew she was talking about all of him, not just his body. No woman had ever said those words to him quite that way.
He unfastened the ties of her camisole, opening it to expose her breasts. His breath caught in his throat, stealing his words for a moment. Her nipples were puckered to hard points, and he bent his head, kissing first one, then the other before he answered her.
“Make love. Have sex. Fuck…” His voice was a husky whisper against her creamy skin as he kissed and licked his way down her bare stomach to the top of the pantalettes and untied the ribbon. “Sometimes they’re different things. Sometimes, they’re all the same.” He delved into her navel with his tongue and she moaned, her hands locking in his dark hair. “So, what’ll it be, Callie? What do you want from me?” Jax drew away her undergarments and tossed them to the floor.
“All…three…” she managed to gasp.
He smiled in the darkness. When he spoke, he couldn’t keep the amusement from his tone. “Sounds like we’ve got our work cut out for us tonight.”
“I want this…I want you.”
He inserted the tip of himself and slowly began to push. Tight. He looked down into her eyes.
“I can’t—”
“Yes, you can, Callie. Just relax.” His hands moved to fondle Callie’s breasts and she sighed.
The delicious heat of her enfolded him, welcomed him, surrounded him, but then he could go no farther. And when he realized just exactly what she was willing to give him—herself, for the first time, he could barely draw breath.
“You’re—a virgin?” His voice was hoarse, and he shut his eyes tight, trying to hold back on his impulse to push as deep and hard as he could.
But she didn’t need to respond. The proof was blocking his full entrance into her.
“God, Callie,” he muttered. His thoughts scattered. It was all he could do not to lower himself and go into her, filling her completely. He took a deep breath. “There’s no going back, once it’s done—”
The raw vulnerability in her eyes matched his tone, he thought, cursing himself for it. She would not mistake it. But she reached to touch his cheek. “I don’t want to go back. Please…don’t break my heart, Jaxson.”
He pushed, at war with himself. Callie reached up to brush the tousled dark hair out of his eyes.
“Jax?”
He couldn’t give her what she wanted, the only thing she’d asked for. He pretended to misread her uncertainty. He forced himself to hold still, when all he wanted to do was bury himself to the hilt in her warmth.
“I trust you,” she said simply, and he could see in her eyes that she did.
He let his breath out slowly, holding himself in check. Before he could go on, Callie raised her hips, easing his way. He plunged past the barrier, took her cry in his kiss, his fingers spearing through her long hair, and she was branded his forevermore.
She lay still for a moment beneath the full press of his body atop hers, her breasts rubbing the dark hair of his chest.
He lifted his mouth from hers momentarily then shifted to relieve the weight on her smaller frame.
“Which one was that?” she whispered.
Jax’s eyes warmed with laughter. “We’re just getting started, sweetheart. I’ll let you be the judge when we’re finished…if we ever are.” His expression turned serious. “Still hurt?”
“Huh-uh. Just feels good now, Jaxson.”
He liked the way she said his name. It had almost sounded like—‘I love you’. So much caring, so much—intimacy, made him feel a little strange. But it felt damn good.
As they moved together, Callie loosened her grip.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Jax murmured, knowing why she’d done it. “Do you think I’d even notice if it did?” He slammed into her forcefully, and she arched up to him, trying to take more of him each time. Deeper and deeper he drove into her as her nails raked his back, then her fingers fisted in the sheets at her side.
“I can’t—get—enough—of you…” she muttered breathlessly.
“We’ve got—all night, Callie.” It was a ragged promise, his voice raspy; hoarse with emotion.
“Jax—I feel—” she broke off, words no longer needed. Their bodies moved in perfect time, their hearts pounding the same rhythm against one another.
“Just…stay with me,” Jax muttered roughly as his own need built, washing over him, hurtling him into the abyss of hot, overpowering pleasure.
As Jax slipped over the edge of the crest, a thousand glittering diamonds seemed to explode in a starburst of pleasure such as he’d never known before, and with it came the bittersweet knowledge that he had been a fool.
One night of Callie Buchanan, even all night, would never be enough.
Chapter 9
Jax lay awake long after Callie had curled up next to him and gone to sleep, her head pillowed on his shoulder. He fingered a strand of the copper-colored hair that fell across his chest, and Callie nestled closer to him, sighing in her sleep.
Their lovemaking had been hot, and Callie had been a surprisingly uninhibited lover. Jax smiled in the darkness. She’d been anxious to please him, hesitant at first, not because she was unwilling, but because she was unsure. As the night wore on, though, she became more certain in her own ability to pleasure him.
Now, as Jax looked down at her, he realized he had some odd feelings that had nothing to do with the sex they had shared. What would it be like to go to bed like this every night? To come home to a warm hearth and a good meal every evening? To have an everyday life together with someone like her? Like Callie? He shook his head in the darkness, doggedly honest with himself. Not someone like Callie. With Callie.
He’d never really thought about those things before. Being raised in the Cherokee way had not been easy for him or his brother. They had fought many childhood battles over their white blood, their Anglo names, their American father.
When Wolf Blocker and his men had annihilated the Cherokee camp at Quartz Mountain, the 45th Division cavalrymen had taken Jaxson and Brendan to their father’s ranch, thinking to deliver the boys to a safe haven. Their hell had only just begun. Life there with their father had been harder than anything they had known before.
Jack McCall had had his own notions of how his boys would be raised, different than anything they’d ever enco
untered in their years with their mother and their stepfather, in the Indian encampment. McCall was high-tempered and heavy-handed, determined to bring his sons into the white world. Willingly, or not.
Jaxson sighed, remembering how glad they’d been to see their father when the cavalry had escorted them to the “Flying M” ranch. By the next morning, when the pony soldiers had ridden out, the boys already knew that coming to live with their father had been a serious mistake.
Jack McCall had had no choice but to take his sons in when Lieutenant Reynolds had told him what had happened, but he didn’t like the idea of being saddled with two reminders of his time with Morning Sun. It complicated his situation with his wife, Annie, more than a little. Raising her husband’s offspring with another woman—an Indian woman—was not in her plans when she’d married Jack after bearing him a son out of wedlock. She’d never let Jaxson and Brendan forget it, either. She’d been a hard woman.
Jax kissed Callie’s cheek absently. Annie had not been like Callie at all. Callie would make a good wife, a good mother. For someone. A shot of jealousy bolted through him. How could he be jealous of someone he didn’t know?
His fingers stopped tracing lazy patterns on her skin abruptly. “Jax?”
Jax looked down into Callie’s sleepy eyes. She smiled up at him, and his heart clenched in his chest.
“What’s wrong, Marshal?”
“I was just thinking.”
Callie shivered.
“You cold, honey?” he asked, turning toward her a little.
“Mm,” she murmured, shamelessly trailing her hand across the hard expanse of his chest. “Tildy Rienholdt said I’d be warm in your bed.”
Jax grinned at her teasing, then came across her, pinioning her arms above her head as he slowly bent to nuzzle a breast.
Callie gasped, then moaned, as Jax lifted his mouth briefly.
“I guess we’d better not make a liar of her then, had we, Miss Buchanan?”
****
Morning came, and the small band of travelers ate a hearty breakfast before reluctantly loading up into the stage to resume their journey. The weary miles rolled out behind them, yet steadfastly lay before them as the coach bumped and swayed across the flat land of Indian Territory.
Jax, riding ahead as usual, expected to feel a shale arrowhead pierce his back at any moment. Outwardly, he remained calm, feigning ignorance of the presence of the two Apaches who shadowed him no more than a half-mile away. He slowly rode up to the edge of the clearing and, unsurprised, found exactly what he’d been expecting.
The band of Apaches was not large, but outnumbered the stagecoach travelers badly. Making a stand against this renegade bunch would end in certain death for them. He drew a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. The war party had not seen him yet, but their scouts knew exactly where he was…and the stagecoach, as well.
He wheeled the horse and started back toward the stage. Trey and Sam would have to manage the passengers. Maybe they could work out a plan. The next stage station was ten miles away, but they’d never make that. Their only chance would be for him to buy enough time for the others to get there, safe. And even that wouldn’t be a sure bet.
He smiled grimly to himself. There was only one thing that was certain. His job as a Federal Deputy Marshal made him responsible for the seven other people in that stagecoach. If his life was forfeit to see them safe—well, that was part of wearing the badge.
Somehow, the honor of being a U.S. Marshal didn’t seem worth it anymore, and not because of what might happen to him at the hands of the Apache. He knew there would be torture, a test of his manhood over and over, until he died of the pain or the injuries—or both. He’d go through that a thousand times, if he knew he had just one more night with Callie.
He bent his head into the wind as he rode, the irony of the situation surprising him. He thought of Joe Ames, the man who had taught him all he knew of being a marshal, of being a man of honor. He would trade it all, if it were possible; give up everything about this job he loved, everything he owned, to take away this one moment in time. The Apache torture would be difficult to withstand.
But nothing would be as hard as looking into Callie’s eyes for the last time.
****
The stage slowed, the wheels grinding to a hesitant stop.
Jax reined up near the front of the coach. The driver, Trey Newell, looped the reins of the team and handed them to Sam Briscoe, his shotgun rider. He lithely jumped down and walked the few paces to where Jax waited, away from the stage to afford the two of them some privacy.
“What’s the matter, Jax?” Newell asked.
“Looks like a renegade band of Apaches.” Jax dismounted. “Just over that next rise.”
Newell kept his eyes on Jax. He gave a muffled curse under his breath. “What the hell are Apaches doing this far from home?” Newell shifted nervously from one foot to the other. “Got any ideas?”
“There’s no way we can outrun them, Trey. You know that.”
The big man nodded. “It’s ten more miles to the next station.”
“They don’t look like they’re in much of a talking mood,” Jax continued, almost to himself. Looked more like they were getting ready for some entertainment—at our expense. They’d made no effort to conceal themselves, he thought, and why should they? There was no way they could be defeated, if it came to a fight.
“We’ve got to let the passengers know what’s happening, Jax. They—” Newell broke off. “They’ll need time to make their peace with God before—well, you know.” He shuddered.
Jax met the other man’s eyes. Death would be preferable to what the Apaches did to their captives. “Yeah. I know.”
“How many of ’em are there, do you figger?”
Jax sighed. Too many. “At least thirty. Traveling light. No women or children.”
“Damn!” Trey muttered vehemently.
“You go back and tell them, Trey. I’m going to go see if there’s…anything I might be able to do.”
“Maybe they ain’t seen us yet,” Trey said hopefully. “We could go through that little gully over there, veer off to the side—”
“No.” In spite of their situation, Jax smiled. “No, they’ve been behind us for at least an hour. They know right where we are. And if we do what you suggest, it shows fear. That’s the one thing the Apaches loathe. They know a lot of slow ways to kill a coward, but a brave man dies quickly.” He met Newell’s eyes, his own expression somber once more. “I’d just as soon get it over with, if that’s what it’s got to be.”
Jax saw Callie clamber from the stage and head toward them. “Go on, Trey.” He put a hand on the driver’s thick shoulder. “I’ll handle the most stubborn one of the lot for you.”
“Jax, if they take you—” Trey began.
“If they do, you and Sam make good time. Get the hell away from here while I keep them occupied. And don’t do anything stupid. Get to that next station as fast as you can.”
There was no argument. Trey turned and walked back to the stage, not meeting Callie’s eyes as she passed, making straight for Jaxson.
“What is it?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
“Callie—” There was no easy way to say what he had to tell her. And suddenly, there was so much he wanted to say, that he didn’t know where to begin. He looked at the ground a minute, his hands on his hips.
“We’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t we?” Callie’s voice was quiet.
“Yeah. We’re in some kind of trouble, all right.” He met her eyes. “There’s a band of Apaches up ahead of us. We can’t—outrun them. And we can’t let them know we’re scared. I…don’t think there’s much I can do, from the looks of them.”
“But you’re going to try. You’re going to walk into—certain death. For all of us.” Callie laid her hand on the soft leather sleeve of his coat. “Jaxson—” her chin quivered, her eyes welling with tears.
“Callie, I don’t have any choice. Jes
us, do you think I want to do this? To leave you—” He took off his hat, raking a hand through his dark hair. The wind lifted it from his fingers, tousling it even more. “Do you have any bullets for that little toy gun of yours?” he teased.
“I—yes, but—”
“Get Sam or Trey to load it for you. If worse comes to worst, you might be able to do some damage with it. But it has to be at close range.”
From behind them, Tildy Rienholdt’s quickly-stifled scream of denial sounded. A wry smile touched Jax’s lips as he remembered their conversation from the night before.
Callie clasped his arm tightly. “Don’t do this for her, Jax! No one on that stage is worth you getting killed!”
Jax gave her a slow grin. “No one except you, Callie.”
Callie gasped. “Oh, Jax, no. No!” The tears spilled over. “Not me, either,” she whispered.
She raised her eyes to his, and he bent to kiss her, swift and sure. He released her and turned away before she could see the gathering storm. She was worth everything, but Treadwell had damn near destroyed her self-worth. Jax had to stay alive to see him finished, and Callie protected.
First the Apaches, Jaxson thought, his anger so hot and red before him he could scarcely think. First the Apaches.
Then, Treadwell.
Chapter 10
Callie sat in the stage, wrapped warmly in Jaxson’s coat. He’d given it to her “for safekeeping.” then kissed her one last time, slow and tender, mounted up and ridden away toward where the Apaches waited. She knew why he’d given the coat to her, really. He knew the Indians would take it…when they took him.
That had been fifteen minutes ago. Fifteen agonizingly long minutes that Callie could have sworn felt like two hours.
The stage lurched into motion, and Callie, along with the other passengers sat quietly, not speaking.
Only Reverend Manley seemed calm and unafraid. His wife sat grasping his hand, staring straight ahead, her pale features drawn and taut with unspoken anxiety.
MayBell Rienholdt sat on the opposite seat by her aunt, crying silently into a lace handkerchief, her pale face blotched red now.
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