Twelfth Moon

by Lori Villarreal

  And he’d been willing – eager – to oblige her.

  “What the hell!” he shouted hoarsely. Her green-glowing eyes had turned dark, were still glazed with passion, enticing him to return to her. He shoved his fingers through his hair, squeezing his own eyes shut to block out the temptation. Dropping his hands to his sides, he shook his head before looking at her again.

  Her wide eyes registered her shock. With a strangled sound, she scrambled to cover herself, jamming her arms through the sleeves of the shirt. She pulled the edges up and over her shoulders, and then jerked the hem down as far as it would go. And as if that weren’t enough, she dragged the sheet up to her chin.

  “What…was that?” he asked slowly, quietly.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” she replied, her voice low and raspy.

  “I mean, what did you do to me?”

  “What did I do to you?”

  With an impatient gesture, he accused, “You did something to me. I’ve never felt this way before – I’ve never completely lost control like that.”

  “And that’s my fault?”

  “Your body…your scent…it was like I had no choice…no free will.” He pointed at her. “Your eyes were glowing!”

  “Glowing?” She arched an eyebrow.

  “Like a cat’s.”

  “You imagined my eyes were glowing like a cat’s, so you’re angry?” she asked, her tone incredulous.

  “I know what I saw,” he said stubbornly. “And felt.”

  Cadence fought to subdue her body’s will, tempered it, pressed it into a tight ball, forcing it back, deep inside. It worked – for now. The closer she got to Twelfth Moon, the harder it would be for her to control the inevitable. Her pulse slowed, her breathing steadied, her mind coming back into sharp focus. She must not give in to the temptation to tell him who – and what – she was.

  “It must have been a trick of the light,” she suggested, hoping he would believe it.

  Her eyes followed Jonah’s fingers as he raked them through his hair again. She was beginning to know him well enough to recognize it as a sign of his frustration.

  He sighed. “A trick of the light, I reckon…and the shock of discovering you’re a woman.” He was working to convince himself. Then he looked up at her. “An extremely beautiful woman. And it’s been a long while since I – of course that’s no excuse for my behavior. I just don’t know what came over me.”

  Cadence listened while he reasoned it out. He didn’t understand, didn’t know what forces he was up against. If he knew, at least part of her secret, he might be able to take measures, be better prepared to resist her. If she were to make it through the next few days without becoming irrevocably bound to him, they would both need their wits about them.

  He searched for his shirt, found it and began slipping it back on.

  She made a decision she hoped wouldn’t turn out to be the biggest mistake of her life. It was imperative that they make it back to New Orleans so they could go their separate ways. “Jonah,” she said quietly. When it appeared he hadn’t heard her, she said it again, but louder this time. “Jonah.”

  He lifted his gaze, his fingers halting their progress at the buttons of his shirt.

  “Do you believe in…well…things that cannot always be explained?” Her words came slowly, tentatively.

  “Like what kinds of things?”

  Cadence hesitated, fear seizing her throat. She cleared it, feeling like she’d swallowed a shovelful of prairie dust. “There’s something you should know about me. I – I’m not like other women.”

  Jonah snorted. “Go figure.”

  “Maybe you should sit down.”

  He stared at her for a moment before moving to sit in the chair beside the bed. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  She gave him a lame smile. “Not only won’t you like it, you probably won’t believe it.”

  “Well, then, spit it out.”

  Cadence took a deep breath to fortify her courage. “The women in my family—” Oh, how could she explain this without it sounding silly, without telling why she suffered this affliction! She began again. “For generations, the women in my family have been afflicted with a certain…condition. It culminates once a year, during a time we call Twelfth Moon.”

  “Twelfth Moon?”

  “The twelfth full moon at the end of a year’s cycle,” she clarified. “During which we experience the irresistible urge to—” Oh, God. “Mate.”

  She waited for his reaction.

  He stared blankly at her.

  “With any male who happens to be in proximity. Once the moon is completely full, I won’t be able to control it.”

  Nothing.

  “Er…control myself.”

  Did he hear, or even understand what she’d just said?

  “Right now, that male would be you, specifically.”

  It took him a moment to respond. “What the hell are you talking about?” Jonah snapped. “I could swear you just said you get hot and horny once a year and that you have no control over it – yourself.”

  “That’s not exactly what I said, but yes.”

  “Why?”

  His expression showed his disbelief. “I can’t explain all the details. What I can tell you is that it’s passed only to the females in my family – from a spell cast long ago.”

  “A spell…affecting only the females…right.” He rubbed his face with his hands, and then dropped them, standing abruptly. “Well, I’d say that is the biggest piece of hogwash I have ever heard!”

  He was angry.

  Not surprised, but startled by his reaction, nonetheless, Cadence threw his words back at him. “You just told me – accused me – of doing something to you,” she hissed. “You said you felt like you had no will, no control.”

  “It’s true,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I did feel that way – but a spell, for Christ sake? You’ve got to be joking…or just plum crazy.”

  “I’m not crazy,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “And I’m no chaste priest. I’m a man. When I see a beautiful – and naked – woman, there are other parts of my body that do the thinking for me.”

  “I wouldn’t have been naked if you hadn’t taken my clothes off!”

  “And if you’d told me the truth to begin with, we wouldn’t be talking about it now,” Jonah said irritably.

  Cadence expelled a sound of disgust. “In which case, your body parts would have been doing their thinking a whole lot sooner.”

  “My body p–” Jonah stalked to the side of the bed, looming over her. “Listen, lady,” he ground out, “you’re the one who said any male within a mile of your high-and-mighty presence wouldn’t be able to resist you.”

  “I never said ‘any male within a mile,’” she retorted, repeating his words in a mocking tone.

  “Whatever.” He waved his arm dismissively. “But I’ll tell you this – I’m no weak-kneed sissy-boy, easily led around by my cock.”

  Cadence folded her arms across her chest and smirked. “Apparently you are.”

  “Oh, I can resist your charms, missy. Whether this malarkey about a spell is true or not, I won’t have to worry about it. The fact still remains that you killed my brother.”

  She gasped softly.

  He sneered nastily at her. “All I need to do is think about that and my dick will shrivel in disgust. So no matter how much you beg me to relieve your…sexual urges, nothing can change what you did.” He turned on his heel, tucking in his shirt and threw on his gun belt, buckling it so it sat low on his hips. He then snatched the half-full bottle of whiskey on the dresser and slammed out of the room.

  Cadence sat clutching the sheets, frozen in horror at his words. She stared at the door.

  He was right.

  He was so right about everything.

  Tears blurred her vision. How could she possibly imagine he would want to do that with her given the fact that she’d murdered his brother? She dropped her
face into her hands and wept. She wept for having taken a life. She wept for her lost virginity. She wept for the loss Jonah and his family had suffered at her hands. But mostly, she wept for her own selfish reasons that had nothing to do with her gift and everything to do with her heart.

  After a while, she felt spent, wrung out, exhausted, both physically and emotionally. With a huge sigh, she fell back, resting her head on the pillow.

  Of course she was a fool to hope that Jonah might want her for herself and not because he was under the influence of the spell. How could he? How could any man? But she could no longer deny her attraction to Jonah. She wanted him. It may be that the approach of Twelfth Moon intensified her emotions, her desire for him, but something deep inside her recognized him as the one for her – her true mate.

  Her destiny.

  She admired his sense of honor, his strength, and commitment to duty. And there were those moments when he revealed a tender side. It was evident in the way he’d wrapped her wrists with a bandana before binding them, how he’d tended to her wounds from the hanging. He’d shown consideration by allowing her to relieve herself in private, even though he’d thought she was a boy at the time. All these things added up to the sum of his character, giving her a glimpse of the man hidden behind the rough edges.

  It was just her dumb luck that the man she chose would completely despise her.

  Night had fallen sometime between her waking, almost making love with Jonah, and their argument. The room was dark, except for a weak glow coming from the lamp on the bedside table. She turned her head in that direction and thought maybe she should extinguish the lamp. It would serve him right to come back to a dark room and bang his shin on something – preferably something sharp! But her limbs felt too listless. She was unable to summon the ambition to do it, so she just closed her eyes instead.

  Her thoughts drifted and she wondered where Jonah had gone off to. Didn’t he fear she would try to escape? Right now, he was probably too angry to care. She could hardly blame him. He was, after all, an unwilling participant in a situation beyond his control.

  But his will was strong, as was his hatred of her.

  Once she was in the full peak of Twelfth Moon, she would be at the mercy of her body’s commands. In the days to come his fortitude would be tested to its limit. He may be the one she’d chosen to bind herself to, but she’d be damned if she would force a union that would be only one sided – would try her best to avoid it.

  Eight

  JONAH STOOD JUST outside the door, listening to the muffled sounds of her weeping. His words had been cruel, lashing, like the angry strikes of a whip. But it had been a gut reaction, a response to the red haze of fury that had overpowered his good sense.

  From the moment he’d discovered she was no boy, but instead a beautiful woman who happened to be put together more perfectly than any other he’d ever seen, he’d been unaccountably drawn to her. It was as though his body already knew her, had already taken and enjoyed, slaked itself inside her, only in some other place – another lifetime.

  It made him uneasy, distrustful of his own judgment.

  It had happened once before, when he’d returned home from the war to find out his ‘loving’ fiancé had married his best friend. That experience had proven just how flawed his judgment was when it came to women.

  Just a few minutes ago, Cade had seemed completely unaffected by what had to have been a traumatic experience, courtesy of his brother, Robert. Had she told the truth? He’d seen the brand on the inside of her luscious thigh with his own eyes. She’d been hot, wet, eager and ready to take him within her, and he’d been close – so close to entering what he knew would be paradise.

  Then thoughts of Robert had stopped him.

  In all good conscience, Jonah couldn’t allow himself to make love with his brother’s murderer – and he couldn’t expect her to have a wish to make love with the blood kin of the man who had raped her.

  Jonah looked down at his feet. Shit. He hadn’t even taken his boots off. He’d been in such a god-awful hurry to thrust into her heat, there’d been no time for anything other than dropping his drawers. All reason had left him, replaced by primal instinct. All he’d been able to think about was to be inside her, to pound into her like some kind of beast – like an animal in rut.

  Was there some truth to what she’d told him?

  Was there really some sort of spell at work here, some inexplicable force that had both of them so twisted up with lust that everything else ceased to matter?

  It had grown quiet in the room. He didn’t even know her real name – hadn’t even thought to ask. He hesitated a moment, thinking maybe he ought to go in and check on her, but decided against it. With a heavy sigh, he turned away from the door and made his way down to the saloon.

  The place was about half full, the air already filling with a haze of smoke, the scent of unwashed bodies, and the sounds of many conversations. He walked through, his sharp gaze surveying his surroundings, taking note of every man, their position, determining whether they might pose a threat. He chose a table in the corner and sat with his back to the wall as he always did.

  The bartender, Cyrus, shuffled over and placed a shot glass on the table. “Anythin’ else I kin get ya?”

  Jonah shook his head.

  Still hovering near the table, Cyrus said, “You got the look ‘o the law ’bout ya.”

  Jonah was impressed with the bartender’s astuteness, but irritated by his nosiness. “I’m a U.S. Marshal,” he said low. He didn’t care for anyone to overhear this conversation. There were too many fools out there who thought to seek glory by facing down a lawman.

  “That boy you brung in with ya…he yer prisoner?”

  “No.”

  In the silence that followed, Cyrus shifted to his other foot. “Well, ifin there’s anythin’ ya need, jist holler,” he said and left Jonah in peace.

  But peace was nowhere near what Jonah was feeling right now. He poured a shot and downed it in one long swallow, quickly refilling his glass. What the hell was he going to do with Cade – or whatever her name was? Obviously she’d killed Robert in self-defense. But how had she delivered such a vicious attack? She’d yet to explain that. Before this journey was over, he’d sure as hell get the truth out of her.

  If she were a man – if it had been a man who’d done the killing, Jonah would have had no qualms in seeing to his hanging. But now, knowing what Robert had done to her, seeing the pain caused by what she’d experienced written in her eyes, Jonah was no longer sure she deserved to die.

  She’d already been hung once. Technically it was for a different crime, but hadn’t she been punished enough? For some reason he believed her about that other murder. He remembered the poisonous glare of that fellow, Ned Furley, and Jonah’s gut told him she spoke the truth about that one.

  There was nothing to do but get her back to New Orleans and her family. He drank the shot, knowing it was his last. Better to quit while he was ahead. It never did a man much good to have his wits dulled by too much liquor.

  What was he going to do when he got back to the room? He’d stay as far away from her as possible, that’s what. He’d sleep on the floor, and then first thing in the morning, they’d be on their way to New Orleans. If there was a spell, he’d just have to make sure he didn’t succumb to her charms, as plentiful as they were. Once they were in New Orleans, he’d slake his lust on some saloon whore – any whore. Maybe even more than one. He had the feeling he was going to be busting the buttons on his denims by the time they got there.

  As though his thoughts of whores and sex conjured her up, a young woman sashayed over to his table. There were a few other women in the saloon serving drinks and entertaining the customers. Their high-pitched laughter could be heard among the raucous male voices.

  She placed a hand on her ample hip. “Hello, stranger. Name’s Rosie. Want some company?”

  Jonah studied her painted face, deciding she was older and plumper than s
he’d looked at first glance. Her heavy tits strained against the top of her low-cut dress, a sight that might have held some interest for him at some other time. But the image of Cade’s slim, naked body, her full breasts with their coral-pink nipples, erect and begging to be suckled, wedged its way into his mind instead.

  He instantly grew hard and damned himself for allowing his thoughts to stray. “Sorry, darlin’,” he drawled. “Not tonight.”

  She glanced down at his crotch and smiled. “You sure, honey? You look plenty equipped to handle a little game of ‘ring around the Rosie.’” At that, she giggled.

  Jonah gave her a tight smile. “Like I said, not tonight.”

  “Okay, sweetie, but ifin you change yer mind,” she said and sauntered away. As she passed a table, one of the men grabbed her by the waist, pulling her into his lap. She laughed robustly, placing her arms around his neck, allowing him to fondle her breasts.

  In another time and place, that would have been Jonah’s reaction. He’d have taken the girl up on her offer and headed upstairs with her. But there already was a woman upstairs – a woman who happened to be off limits.

  He cursed and stood up, grabbing the bottle, sloshing its remaining contents. He’d keep the rest for the trail. It might come in handy. Before he could take a step, however, a man blocked his way. Jonah had seen the fellow approaching, had hoped to make an exit before the man had a chance to confront him. He wasn’t in the mood for trouble. Apparently it wasn’t in the cards tonight.

  “You look like a lawman,” the fellow drawled. He swayed slightly, his whiskey-smelling breath wafting in the air between them.

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Jonah said low.