Sarah found the strength to glare at him. “Having fun,” she muttered, the words heavy with sarcasm. His eyes narrowed. “Does it matter?” she continued. “You can take my word for it, I didn’t plan it. Could you please untie my hands?—if they’re still there. I’m hardly likely to be a threat to you. You’re much bigger than I.”
He didn’t like her tone, she could tell by the ominous tightening of his mouth, but he didn’t say anything, just rolled her onto her side so that he could get at her hands. What he saw made him swear under his breath. His hands were oddly gentle as they worked the knots loose.
When her hands were free, Sarah rolled back onto her back, bringing her hands in front of her with an effort that sent needles through her arms and shoulders, She shook her hands, gingerly, until she felt the blood flowing back into her fingertips. Then she brought her hands together, rubbing her raw wrists.
He didn’t say a word, but his expression was stony as he stared at the raw bands of flesh encircling her wrists. For a moment Sarah thought he might apologize for having bound her so tightly, and she looked up at him, thinking that if he did it would be a good sign. But he did not. He got to his feet, moved to where the horse stood with its head lowered, trying vainly to find a blade of green among the brown, and untied a chamois pouch from behind the saddle.
“You have water,” she croaked accusingly, thinking of the hours she had just passed dreaming of just a drop to wet her parched lips.
His eyes raked her as she lay limply in the small circle of shade cast by a solitary smoke tree, her tawny hair fallen around her pointed face to form a tangled lion’s mane, her golden eyes huge and faintly unfocused as she tried to glare, her soft, full lips cracked and coated with dust. Sarah felt his eyes on the uncovered length of her legs, and made an instinctive attempt to pull down the torn hem of her dust- and perspiration-streaked nightrail. But the movement required too much effort. Her hand fell limply back to rest beside her.
“A little late for modesty now,” he said caustically, coming down on one knee beside her again and sliding a hand behind her head, lifting it slightly while he held the contoured nozzle of the pouch to her lips. Sarah drank thirstily, until he pulled the pouch away.
“Drink too much and you’ll be ill,” he told her. Sarah had lived in the bush country long enough to know that, and had even said it herself more than once. But she had never before realized how one could crave water, lust for it, need it with an intensity that defied all reason. She made a halfhearted grab for the soft pouch, but he pulled it farther out of her reach. “You can have more later.”
He stood up, his big body blocking the sun, and took a brief swallow from the water pouch. As he tilted his head back, the clean lines of his throat and chin were exposed. His skin was bronzed, she saw, far darker than it had been when he had disappeared from Lowella a month ago. A night’s stubble of black whiskers toughened his appearance, making him look more like a bandit than the seasoned bushrangers. He had filled out some, his shoulders in the snug-fitting red shirt so broad that they gave her pause, his waist and hips and legs still lean but tautly muscled.
He turned away to refasten the water pouch to the saddle. The thought of gathering her slowly returning strength and using this opportunity to flee occurred to Sarah, to be savored and then, reluctantly, dismissed. He would catch her in seconds. And he wouldn’t even need the horse to do it.
“Here.” He was back, kneeling beside her again, dropping a blanket to the ground nearby. The bandanna was no longer tied around his neck, she saw as he bent over her, but was in his hand, darkened where he had moistened it with a little of the precious water. “You should have told me what bad shape you were in.”
Sarah met his gaze, relieved at the touch of the cool cloth on her burning skin even though she tried to glare at him. “I had no reason to believe you would have been concerned.”
His face hardened. “Unlike you, I don’t take pleasure from causing gratuitous suffering. I have no wish for you to be uncomfortable. The punishment I have in mind for you won’t cause you any pain. At least, not as long as you’re a good girl and do as you’re told.” His hand, which had been wiping her face with the cloth, moved down to slide the blessed coolness over her neck. Then, to her horror, she felt him slip his hand beneath the prim neckline of her nightrail and swish the cloth casually between and beneath her breasts, his knuckles brushing the soft crests, accidentally, she thought. But it was no accident the way her nipples suddenly sprang to attention. Galvanized into action, Sarah struggled into a sitting position, thrusting his hand away.
“Get your hands off me!”
He rocked back on his heels, a slow smile stretching his taut lips. It was not a pleasant smile.
“I don’t think you understand what I’ve been telling you, Sarah. Our positions have been reversed. You no longer give the orders. I do. And it would behoove you to keep that in mind.”
“I won’t have you pawing me anytime you feel like it!” Shock at her reaction to his touch had made her foolish. She knew better than to challenge him now, before she had had time to analyze the situation, but the words could not be rescinded. Her breasts felt as if they were on fire where his hand had so casually brushed them. After what had happened between them—the shameful things that he had done to her naked body, the even more shameful things he had caused her to do and to feel, the horrible humiliation that had overcome her afterward—she had thought that she had been cured forever of the cursed attraction he had held for her from the beginning. Now it appeared that, while her mind might have recovered, the message had not yet gotten through to her traitorous body. And he knew it, the swine. She could tell by the mocking gleam in his eyes as he stared at the rigid nubs of her nipples, clearly visible as they pressed wantonly against her thin cotton nightrail.
“I won’t paw you again—until you ask me nicely,” he said with a nasty smile.
Sarah should have felt relieved by his mild response to her ill-advised challenge—she knew very well that, whatever he chose to do to her, she had no means of stopping him—but the twin demons in his blue eyes gave her pause. He was not picking up the gauntlet she had flung at his feet because he felt no need to. The knowledge worried her.
He bent to scoop up the blanket he had dropped beside her. Sarah watched him, her mind working furiously, as he extracted a wicked-looking, curved-blade knife from the scabbard attached to his belt. Holding the blanket in one hand, he pierced it with the knife, making a small slit in the center and then another one, perpendicular to the first.
“Gallagher,” she began carefully as he returned the knife to its scabbard. At his hard look, she hastily amended her unintentional error. “Dominic.” He inclined his head, approving the change. “Why did you abduct me? To pay my father back for having you beaten, or . . . ?”
“Not your father. You. I mean to pay you back, Miss Sarah.”
“I tell you I didn’t tell anyone about—about what happened! As if I would! You must see that I had as much to lose as you.”
“Not quite as much. I nearly lost my life.”
“Not because of me!” His shuttered face told her that she was wasting her time and her breath—and making him angry to boot. She tried a new tack. “When a runaway convict is caught—and most are—they are usually hanged. If Percival—if my father had you beaten, I can see why you ran. But if you were to go back now, taking me with you, I could say that you saved me from the bushrangers, and you wouldn’t be punished at all. I could even get my father to try to get your sentence reduced, as a reward. Wouldn’t that be better than spending the rest of your life running?”
“Mmmm.” He shook out the blanket, making the dust rise around them in a swirling cloud. Sarah coughed, managing just in time not to glare at him. If she had any hope of persuading him to take her home, she had best not anger him. “Hold still.” He dropped the blanket over her head as he spoke. Sarah jumped, surprised as she was enveloped in the stifling folds; then as he pulled th
e slit down over her head she realized that he had fashioned her a rough poncho. The gray blanket with its black diamond pattern was wool, hand-woven by an aborigine sometime in the distant past, and it was faded and dusty, but it covered her far more adequately than did her tattered nightrail. She guessed that when she was standing, the blanket would hang past her knees, so that her nightrail would show only from the middle of her slim calves to her ankles. With her bare feet, filthy now, protruding, and her hair hanging to her waist in a tangle of hopeless snarls, Sarah knew that she must look ludicrous. But at least she was decently covered.
“Ga—Dominic,” she said, striving to contain her impatience as he hacked off two corners of the blanket poncho and, gathering up the rope he had used to bind her wrists, moved down to crouch at her feet. Still he had not replied to her proposal. Sarah allowed herself the luxury of darting a glance at the top of his dusty black hat as he bent his head, studying her feet. When he picked up one of her feet and fitted a piece of blanket to her sole, wrapping the ends around her toes and ankle, she jiggled her captive foot to get his attention. “Dominic!”
“Hold still.” He looked up, frowning, then removed the piece of blanket around her foot and pierced it in several places with his knife. After cutting the rope in half, he again returned the knife to the scabbard at his waist.
“Did you hear me?” Sarah could not stifle the exasperation she felt. It was plain in her voice. He was fitting the blanket around her foot again, then using the rope to lace it into a crude sandal. At her words, he glanced up.
“Oh, I heard you.” His voice was dry. “I may be a convict, Sarah, but I am not a fool. Why should I put my life in your hands? I have only your word that you would do as you say, and frankly, me darlin’, I don’t trust you an inch. You should feel fortunate that I don’t take a whip to you just to show you how it feels. After all, you had me whipped when I did nothing more than make love to you—with your cooperation. What would you consider suitable punishment for abduction, and, uh, everything else, I wonder?” He shook his head. “I’m not inclined to find out.”
“I did not have you whipped!”
He was fitting the second piece of blanket around her other foot and lacing it in place. The brim of his hat shielded his face from her eyes. “You may not have given the express order, but you must have known damned well what would happen when you went sobbing to Papa about what I’d done to you.”
“I tell you I didn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter.” His voice suddenly was weary. “I’m not going to argue with you, Sarah. Here you are, and here you stay, and that’s an end to it.”
“Won’t you at least consider . . . ?”
“No, I won’t.” He looked up at her then, his expression suddenly brutal. “I’ve had enough of being the next thing to a slave. I’m not going back, and you’re not either. At least, not for the present.”
“Dominic . . .”
“Be silent.” He stood up abruptly, reaching down a hand to grasp her arm and haul her to her feet when she just sat there gaping at him. “I’ve made up my mind, and there’s an end to it.” He slipped his hat from his head as he spoke and plopped it down on her tangled mane. “Here. I don’t want you getting sun stroke. And you’ll need this, too.”
“This” was the dirty, still-damp bandanna, which he tied over her nose and mouth. Sarah stared at him over the edge of the cloth when he turned her back around after tying the kerchief behind her head.
“What about you?” The question was muffled by the mask.
He stood there looking at her, the sun burning down on his bare head, bringing out the blue-black lights in his ebony waves. His eyes were very blue in his dark face as he surveyed her without expression.
“I think I can stand the heat better than you,” was all he said before he clasped her waist and lifted her back into the saddle, turning her sideways this time so that the leather would not chafe the tender skin on the insides of her thighs.
XV
It was nearly dusk when they drove the sheep through a grove of ghost gums to the tiny trickle of water that was all that was left of a stream that, judging from the wide, sun-dried banks, had once been bountiful. Sarah stared hard at it. Noting the position of the slowly sinking sun and recalling as best she could the way they had come, she decided that it must be Kerry’s Creek, which ran along the northern edge of the station before veering off toward the mountain range known as the Australian Alps. The creek eventually—she could not be sure of her distances—emptied into the Murrumbidgee River near the town of Wagga Wagga. If she could manage to escape, her one hope would be to follow the creek to safety. The trek would be arduous, to say the least, but not, she thought, impossible, now that she knew in what direction to head and had the creek to provide her with water. It would never do simply to run away whenever the opportunity presented itself without some kind of plan. If she did, without some notion of where she was and where she was going, she risked getting lost in the bush. And getting lost in the bush meant quick death.
Sarah had given up trying to hold herself stiffly erect. The heat and the miles they had traveled had robbed her even of that last prideful gesture. She sat sideways, slumped back against Dominic’s sweat-soaked chest, her head lolling against one broad shoulder, her legs trailing over one of his as she practically sat in his lap in the saddle. The arm holding the reins was around her back, supporting her. In such close contact with him, his body heat was almost tangible. She could feel the steely hardness of his muscles, hear the rhythmic beat of his heart, smell the musky, perspiration-tinged scent that reminded her constantly that she was being held close by a man. With the heavy wool blanket enveloping her, she felt as if she were being roasted alive. But the alternative was to ride once again with only the thin nightrail to shield her from the curious eyes of the men. And this she refused to do.
The hat and kerchief had been a blessing throughout the sweltering afternoon. The sun had been relentless; the clouds of dust had reduced Dominic, who had no protection from them, to sporadic fits of coughing. Sarah had not offered to return either his hat or his bandanna to him, and to her surprise, given his present hostility toward her, he had not suggested it. Not even when his face began to burn to a deep, dark red and the coughing got so bad that it shook his body. If he wanted to be chivalrous, she would not object, Sarah thought caustically. Evidently it hadn’t occurred to him that, as a native Australian, she was probably less susceptible to the conditions than he, who came from a country noted for its cool mists and gentle rains. Or, if it had occurred to him, he was stubbornly refusing to admit it. If she felt an occasional twinge of concern when his coughing shook his chest, she squelched it with the reminder that, thanks to him, she was physically miserable and worried about her family’s being worried about her. They would have no way of knowing that she had been abducted by Lowella’s runaway convict. And even if they did, Sarah thought, it would provide them no comfort. They could not guess that, whatever other emotions he might generate inside her, she was not frightened of him. Although, she thought, casting a darkling look back at him, perhaps she should be.
The smell of the water had apparently reached the sheep, because they were bleating frantically, nearly running as they struggled toward the creek. The horses were affected too. The one they were riding, an Appaloosa with dark gray haunches fading to near white with gray spots toward the withers, picked up its pace, tossing its head and whinnying in anticipation. When the sheep reached the creek, they milled around in the water, spreading out endlessly until they were chest deep in muddy water for as far as the eye could see. Dominic made no attempt to hold back his horse. It splashed into the stream, which came to just past its knees, nudging aside a sheep and lowering its head to drink thirstily. The other riders, seven in all, were likewise watering their horses. There was no fear of the sheep straying now that they had found the stream.
Eventually Dominic pulled up the horse’s head, to its obvious displeasure. It snorted
and sidestepped dramatically, tossing its head and pawing at the water. He controlled it seemingly without effort, reinforcing Sarah’s earlier impression that he was at home with horses. With shouts and swings of the long whip that had been tied to the skirt of the saddle, he began to force the sheep out of the water before they could drink themselves to death. The other riders were doing the same. With Dominic’s arm no longer available to support her, Sarah was forced to put her arms around his waist and cling tightly to keep from sliding from the saddle. Pressed so tightly against him, she grew ever more aware of the hard male contours of his body, of his scent, and of the crisp, damp hairs that curled on his chest, on which her cheek was forced to rest. As she felt his body move, heard his lilting voice shouting at the recalcitrant sheep, and felt his thighs shifting beneath her own, Sarah realized to her horror that her body was responding blindly to his nearness. Having once learned the secret joys of being female, her body was reacting automatically to the overwhelming presence of the man who had schooled it.
It was dark by the time the sheep were at last herded together some little way from the creek. The men would watch them in shifts; a rider went from man to man, informing each of which shift he would be expected to take. When he got to Dominic, he eyed Sarah hungrily throughout the terse conversation. Sarah, inwardly shuddering at the thick-featured, unshaven face with its two rotten teeth that were clearly visible as he spoke, pressed her face against Dominic’s chest and refused to look at him. It had just occurred to her that she was the only woman, and a helpless captive at that, among eight men, every one of whom, besides the man she was now cringing against, was eying her with some degree of speculation. Sarah had an uneasy suspicion that they were assuming that she would provide the evening’s entertainment. . . .
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