Hunter

by Diana Palmer

  “All right.”

  “No comment about the cooking?” he added, leading her into a stark white bathroom with aging fixtures.

  “I’d be surprised if you couldn’t cook. You seem so self-sufficient.”

  “I’ve always had to be,” he said simply. He stripped off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and got out medicine and bandages from the cabinet over the sink. “My father died when I was small. I lived with my grandfather, on the reservation, until I was old enough to enlist. When I got out of the Green Berets, I kicked around for a few years doing other things. Eventually Ritter offered me a job and I’ve been there ever since.”

  “No wife, ever?” she asked hesitantly.

  His dark, quiet eyes met hers. “Women don’t fit in a place like this,” he said. “It’s stark and bare-bone comfort, and it’s lonely. In case you haven’t guessed, this is part of the reservation, too.” He waited for her reaction, but there wasn’t one. He shrugged and continued. “I’m away most of the time. I’ve never asked anyone to share it because I don’t think a woman could. My job would be an immediate point of contention and my heritage would be another. I live on the reservation,” he added with a mocking smile. “I can see how that would go over with most in-laws. And I believe in some of the old ways, especially in family life.”

  “A woman’s place is three steps behind the man…” she began.

  “A man should behave as one,” he returned simply. “And a woman has her place—a very special place—in the order of things. She gives life, nurtures it. She gives warmth and light to her man, her children.” He ran a basin of water, found a cloth and bathed the wound on Jenny’s arm. “But, no, I don’t think her place is three steps behind her man, or that she becomes property when she marries. Perhaps you don’t know, but in the old days, many Apache women fought right alongside their men and were as respected as the warriors.”

  “No, I didn’t know,” she confessed. The touch of his fingers was painful delight. Her eyes glanced over the hard lines of his dark face with pure pleasure. “You’re proud of your ancestry, aren’t you?”

  He looked down at her. “My people are like a separate state, under federal jurisdiction,” he replied. “We have our own laws, our own reservation police, our own code of behavior. When we live in your world, we seem alien.” He laughed coldly. “I wish I could tell you how many times in my life I’ve been called Tonto or Chief, and how many fights I’ve been into because of it.”

  She was beginning to understand him. He’d grown a shell, she supposed, because of the difficulties. And now he was trapped in it and couldn’t find his way out.

  “I know a little about prejudice,” she said, surprising him. “I’m a female geologist and I work in the oil business.” She smiled. “Equality is all the rage in accounting and law firms back east, and even in corporations. But out in the boondocks in the oil exploration game, there are Neanderthal men who think a woman goes to those lonely places for just one reason. I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve had to threaten someone with a suit for sexual harassment.”

  “Looking the way you do, I can understand your problem,” he mused, glancing at her with dancing dark eyes. “How does this feel?” he added when he’d put antiseptic on the wound and lightly bandaged it.

  “It feels much better, thank you,” she said. Her eyes searched his dark face while he put away the medicine. “What do you mean, the way I look?”

  He closed the cabinet and gazed down at her. His face was expressionless except for the dark, disturbing glitter in his eyes as they slid down her body and up again. “Is it important to hear me say it?” he asked. “You know how lovely you are.”

  Her breath caught. “I’ve been told I was,” she corrected. “It never meant anything. Before.”

  His jaw clenched. He stared at her until she flushed and still his eyes didn’t waver or even blink. “Be careful,” he said quietly. “I still want you very badly.”

  “I’m twenty-seven years old,” she whispered. “If it isn’t you, it won’t be anybody. Ever. I said that once. I meant it.”

  His breath expelled roughly. He caught her around the waist and pulled her up from the edge of the bathtub where she’d been sitting. His arm was steely strong, and the feel and scent of him so close made her almost moan with pleasure.

  “How much do you know about birth control?” he asked bluntly.

  “I know that babies come if you don’t use any,” she replied, trying to sound sophisticated with a beet-red face.

  His eyes were relentless. “And do you think I’m prepared for casual interludes with women all the time?”

  “Most men are,” she faltered.

  “I’m not most men,” he returned. “These days I think of sex as something that goes hand in hand with love, respect, honor. It used to be a casual amusement when I was a young man. I’m thirty-seven now, and it isn’t casual or amusing anymore. It’s serious business.”

  She could have reminded him that for a few minutes one night, he’d forgotten all those reasons, but she didn’t. Her eyes fell to his firm chin. “It isn’t casual with me, either,” she whispered “But I’d give anything…!” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”

  His hand came up, framing her own chin, lifting her eyes to his. “You’d give anything…?” he prompted slowly.

  She closed her eyes so that he wouldn’t see the longing. So that she wouldn’t throw herself at him again, as she had that night in Washington. “Nothing. I’m just tired. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “I know you’re infatuated with me,” he said out of the blue.

  Her eyes flew open, startled. “What?”

  “It isn’t something you hide well,” he replied. His eyes narrowed. “I’ve had hell trying not to take advantage of it. I’m a new experience for you, something out of the ordinary, and I know already how you seek the unusual. But since you don’t know, I’ll tell you. Sex is the same with an Apache as it is with a white man, in case you—”

  He broke off because she slapped him, with the full strength of her arm behind the blow. Tears welled in her eyes; her face had gone white with shock and grief.

  He didn’t flinch. He let her go, very gently, and moved away. “I’ll see about something to eat,” he said, with no inflection at all in his voice as he started toward the kitchen.

  Jenny cried. She closed the bathroom door and cried until her throat hurt. If he’d tried for months to think up something hurtful, he couldn’t have succeeded any better. She knew he was aware of her desire for him, but she hadn’t known he was aware of her feelings, too. It made her too vulnerable.

  Finally she dried her eyes and went out without looking in the small mirror. She could imagine what she looked like without having to see herself.

  He glanced at her and his expression hardened as he proceeded to fry steak and eggs. “I’d expected to spend the weekend here, so I loaded up on supplies yesterday,” he said. “You can set the table.”

  She took the dishes from the cabinet he gestured toward and set two places, including a mug for the coffee that was brewing in the modern coffeepot. She took her time meticulously folding two paper towels to go at each place.

  “Utensils?” she asked in a totally defeated tone.

  “Here.” He opened the drawer beside him, but as she moved closer to reach inside it, he turned suddenly and pulled her to him. His mouth eased down over hers with a gentle, insistent pressure that caught her completely off guard. She felt his strong teeth nipping tenderly at her lower lip until her mouth opened for him. Then she felt his tongue inside, touching her own, his arm contracting, the sound that echoed out of his throat, deep and gruff and faintly threatening.

  Her nails bit into his back where her arms had gone under his and around him, and she bit off a short, sharp little cry as the pleasure cut the ground from under her feet. The injury to her arm was still throbbing, but she held on for dear life, uncaring in the thrall of such aching pleasure. She didn’t want him to sto
p, not ever!

  All too soon, he lifted his head. His eyes were dark with emotion, his jaw clenched. “Finish setting the table,” he said huskily, and abruptly let her go to concentrate on the Spanish omelet he was making.

  She couldn’t help the trembling of her hands as she complied with that request. It wasn’t until they were halfway through the impromptu meal and the strong, fresh coffee that she was able to get some kind of control over herself.

  “To continue what I started to say when we were in the bathroom, I’m not prepared for an intimate encounter,” he said when she laid down her fork. He didn’t look at her as he said it. His eyes were on the coffee cup in his hand. “And as I told you in Washington that night, half-breed children belong in no one’s world.”

  Her eyes searched his face. A suspicion at the back of her mind began to take shape. He looked Apache. There was no doubt about that part of his heritage. But the way he felt about mixing the races, wasn’t it violent if he’d never had experience of it?

  “Which one of your parents was white, Phillip?” she asked softly.

  His head jerked up. His eyes flashed at her. “What did you say?” he asked in a tone that should have backed her down. It didn’t.

  “I said, which one of your parents was white?”

  “I’d forgotten that I told you my given name,” he said softly. “You’ve never used it.”

  She began to realize, belatedly, that it was her use of his first name that had rattled him, not her reference to his parentage. She hesitated. “I didn’t realize I had,” she said after a minute.

  He leaned back, troubled, the coffee cup still in his lean, dark hand. He watched her intently. “My mother was white, Jennifer,” he said finally.

  “Is she still alive?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. She couldn’t take life on the reservation, and my father was too Apache to leave it. She left when I was five and I haven’t seen her since. My father died a year later. He gave up. Life without her, he said, was no life. I always consider that I lost both my parents when I was five, so I don’t qualify the statement. I don’t know where my mother is.” His face hardened. “I don’t care. Her family put me through school and supported me while I was younger. I didn’t find out until I was much older. My grandfather never would have told me, but I found a check stub. He was a proud man.” He looked down at his hands. “Life on the reservation is hard. Unemployment, infant mortality, poverty… It’s no one’s idea of the American dream. He took the money for my sake, not for his. What he didn’t spend on me, he sent back.”

  She stretched her hand toward his free one, lying on the table and abruptly stopped. He wouldn’t want sympathy, she supposed.

  But surprisingly, his own hand slid the remaining distance and enveloped hers, his thumb softly stroking her palm. “White and brown,” he observed, staring at the differences in color. “I’m still Apache, Jenny, despite my white blood. But if I had a child with a white woman, he’d be a lost soul, like me. Caught between two worlds. My own people have a hard time accepting me, even though I look more Apache than white.”

  Her eyes adored him. “I can’t imagine a more handsome man of either race,” she said quietly.

  His face went a ruddy color, and she wondered if it was possible to embarrass him.

  She smiled wickedly. “My, my, are you blushing?”

  He let go of her hand with an outright laugh. “Compliments are difficult for me,” he said gruffly. “Eat your omelet.”

  She picked up her fork with a sigh, wincing a little as the movement made her arm uncomfortable. “Can I ask why we aren’t having bacon or sausage with our eggs?” she murmured.

  “Apaches don’t eat pork,” he said. “Or fish. Ever.”

  “Why?” she asked, astonished.

  “Beats me. We just don’t.”

  “I thought I knew something about your people. I suppose I don’t know much at all.”

  He smiled to himself. “You know more than most whites.”

  “I guess that operative of yours who’s Papago knows more,” she murmured without looking at him. “She’s the kind of woman you’ll marry one day, isn’t she?”

  He frowned down at his omelet. “I don’t know that I’ll marry at all,” he said. He lifted his eyes to her sad face and felt a wave of grief that almost knocked him flat. She was infatuated with him, but she could never endure life here. She was beautiful and sweet and he wanted her until she was all but an obsession. But his mind kept insisting that he couldn’t risk having her turn out like his mother. His mother hadn’t been able to take living in an Indian world.

  She sighed wearily. “I’ve had the same feeling lately. I’m almost twenty-eight. Despite the fact that women are becoming mothers later and later in life, I don’t really like the risk factors after thirty-five.” She smiled at her omelet as she cut it. “Funny. I always thought I might make a pretty good mother.”

  “You’ve had the opportunity to marry,” he said stiffly.

  “Oh, of course. Soft, carefree city men who have affairs and look upon marriage as slow death. I had one proposal from a man who was twenty years older than me and wanted to live in Alaska.” She glanced up. “I hate polar bears.”

  He smiled. “So do I.”

  “My other proposal was from a boy my age when I was eighteen, and he only wanted to marry me to get away from his parents. He was rich and I wasn’t—it was a sort of rebellion.” She put down her fork. “I’ve never been asked to marry anybody because I was loved. Wanted, yes. But that wasn’t enough.”

  “You’re not over the hill,” he reminded her.

  “It doesn’t matter.” She looked up at him, her eyes wide and soft and gentle. “I’m sorry you stopped that night in Washington,” she said huskily. “I wouldn’t have regretted it, ever.”

  His jaw tautened. He finished his steak and washed it down with coffee. “It would have hurt like hell.”

  She traced the rim of her plate, her heart beating madly at the memory of his arms around her, his body intimately over her own. “It wouldn’t have hurt long,” she whispered. “I wanted you too badly to care.”

  “God, yes, you did,” he said through his teeth. The memories were driving him crazy. “Shaking in my arms, and I’d barely touched you. By the time I put my mouth on yours, you were trembling all over with the need. I never dreamed that women felt it like that.”

  “Maybe most women don’t feel it like that,” she said uneasily. “Maybe there’s, well, something wrong with me….”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you that a night in my arms wouldn’t cure,” he said curtly. His dark eyes caught her blue ones and held them hotly. “But it would only be a night, and we’d have the rest of our lives to regret it.”

  Her lips parted as she searched his eyes. “No, we wouldn’t,” she whispered. “And you know it. You want me just as much as I want you.”

  He nodded slowly, his gaze dropping to her full breasts and back up again to her mouth and her eyes. “You can only give your chastity once.”

  “I know that, too,” she replied. “I meant what I said. If it isn’t you, it won’t be anybody.” Her breath sighed out raggedly. “I love you,” she said achingly.

  He let out a long, weary sigh. After a minute he got up and held out his hand. She took it, feeling his lean fingers enfold hers, wrap gently around them.

  He led her into his bedroom without speaking and closed the door. “Do you want the light out?” he asked.

  She bit her lower lip. She wanted to be sophisticated and worldly, but she was already blushing.

  He smiled with bitter irony. “Never mind.” He reached up and turned off the light, leaving the room in almost total darkness, except for the half moon that left its yellow shadow over the patchwork quilt on the bed.

  “What do we do now?” she whispered, her voice husky with excitement and faint apprehension.

  “What we did in my hotel room that night in Washington,” he murmured as his hands
reached for her. “Except that this time I won’t pull back when I feel the barrier…”

  “Phillip.” She moaned his name into his mouth as it came down on hers, gasping when she felt him pull her hips roughly into the already aroused thrust of his.

  “This is how badly I want you,” he whispered, his breathing mingling with hers. “It happens the minute your body touches mine. Magic.”

  “Yes.” She pulled his shirt out of his jeans and slid her hands up against his bare back, feeling the taut muscles, the rough silk of his skin. It was cool, and seconds later when her bare breasts melted into the hard wall of his chest, that was cool, too, against the heated warmth of her own skin.

  When he had every scrap of material away from their bodies, he lifted her, with his mouth gently moving on her own, and laid her on the quilt. His hand went to the bedside table. He opened a drawer and removed something. Seconds later, he placed it in her hand and taught her how to put it in place. Even that was exciting and sensual in the hot darkness.

  “This is so we won’t make a baby,” he whispered, his voice deep and slow as he moved over her. His teeth nibbled softly at her upper lip. His lean hands smoothed down her body, lingering on her soft thighs, making her tremble with the pleasure of his touch.

  Her body was shivering. He kissed her tenderly, and then his mouth moved down to her breasts and caressed their hard tips until she was writhing under him.

  “You like that, don’t you?” he whispered. “I like it, too, little one. You taste of satin here, and of desire here,” he breathed against a taut nipple, his lips pulling at it with sensual tenderness.

  She clung to his muscular arms, her breath coming in jerks while he kissed and touched and tasted, the darkness like a warm blanket over her fears.

  When she was shuddering, he eased her trembling legs apart and levered himself down between them, his mouth poised just above her own, his eyes glittered into hers in the darkness. He probed tenderly and felt her tense.

  “When I push down, try not to do that,” he whispered. “If you tense up, it’s going to hurt more.”