Winter Fawn was innocent in that she had never experienced a man’s lust, or her own, for that matter. But she was not ignorant of what went on between men and women, and she knew this feeling welling up inside her, the swelling in her breasts, the tightening of her nipples, the hollow, moist throbbing between her legs was lust.
She was not the only one feeling it. She knew what that hard ridge of flesh against her backside meant. He was aroused. He was ready to mate.
The thought sent twin shafts of longing and confusion shooting through her. Longing for this man who awoke feelings in her she had never known before. Not just these feelings of the flesh, glorious though they were, but also feelings in her heart. The feeling of staring straight into her destiny that first time she had looked into his eyes.
And confusion because she was not ashamed to want this man, even though they were not man and wife. And she should be ashamed. She should be repulsed, horrified. That she was not, that is what confused her.
The longing in her was so, so much stronger than the confusion. If she remained very, very still, and very, very quiet, she could pretend she was still asleep, and perhaps he would not stop. Perhaps he would go on touching her.
It was wrong to feel these things for a man not her husband, to want to join with him, to allow this need inside her to grow and grow until it threatened to swallow her whole. She knew, in her mind, these things were wrong. Yet being held in his arms, experiencing his hand on her bare skin, felt so…right. As if she had been waiting for Carson Dulaney her entire life. As if it was meant that they be together this way.
His hand did not stop at her hip this time. It slid to her belly. Up, up beneath her shirt, over her ribs, until he cupped her breast in his palm.
Winter Fawn held her breath and bit back a moan of startled pleasure. Oh! It was like nothing she had ever imagined before. If asked to describe the sensation, she would not have been able to. There were no words for the tingling heat, or the sharp tug in her womb when his thumb stroked her nipple. At the next stroke, she could not hold back the sound of pleasure that rose in her throat.
Her low purr pulled Carson from his sleep.
It wasn’t a dream. The woman in his arms was no phantom. She was real. She was warm. She was…Winter Fawn.
“Good God.” He pulled his hand from her breast, and it felt as though he were ripping off part of his own flesh and leaving it behind. He squeezed his eyes shut and sat up, burying his face in his hands.
How could he have done such a thing as fondle her in his sleep? He was despicable! He was the lowest form of—
“Carson?”
Oh, God, she was awake, and her voice was quivering. With revulsion? With fear? Anger? He had hoped, prayed, that she’d been asleep and would never know what he’d done. “I’m sorry,” he ground out, unable to face her. “I’m…sorry.”
With a thick Scottish burr, she said, “Ach, now there be somethin’ every lass be wantin’ to hear.”
At her tart tone Carson turned his head and peered at her over his shoulder. “What?”
Anger radiated from her. “I was under the mistaken impression that ye were enjoyin’ yerself.”
Carson swallowed. “The mistaken—”
“Oh, don’t fash yerself,” she told him with a wave of her hand. “I don’t suppose I be the first woman some man has found wantin’. Or left wantin’.” Those last words were muttered under her breath, but loud enough for Carson to hear.
“Wha—” His voice broke. He cleared his throat and started again. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.” She gave a delicate sniff and turned to face the fire. “I dinna say aught.” Then she looked back at him and tilted her head. “Why is it, do ye suppose, that one man wants a woman, and the woman canna stand him. Then when she does find a man she can stand, one who appeals to her, all he can say is ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘Tis a right odd way ‘o things, wouldna ye agree?”
The fire crackled as she boldly held his gaze. “Are you trying to tell me you liked what I was doing? The way I touched you?”
She sniffed again, a delicate sniff of disdain worthy of the haughtiest Southern Belles he’d ever known, and turned to stare at the fire. “I’m saying nothing. Me lips, as me da would say, is sealed.”
“Yeah, and if he had any idea that I’ve had my hands on you the way I just did, he’d string me up by my neck and let the buzzards pick my bones clean.”
“He isna here, Carson.”
“The hell he isn’t.” Frustration roughened his voice.
“It disnae matter,” she said softly. “’Tis obvious you dinna feel the things I was feeling, or you wouldna have said you were sorry.”
“Dammit, don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?” she asked, surprised, confused.
“Don’t put a weapon like that into a man’s hands.”
“I dinna ken yer meaning. What weapon hae I given ye?”
“Don’t tell a man you like the way he touches you.”
“And why not, if ‘tis true?”
“Because he’ll take advantage of you. He’ll get it in his head that if you like that, you’ll like more.”
“And?”
“God, you are innocent, aren’t you?”
“If you mean I’ve never been touched before the way you touched me, then aye. Is that bad?”
Carson closed his eyes and prayed for strength. The strength to resist the sheer temptation of her. “Winter Fawn, a man will lie and cheat and steal, sometimes even kill, to get what he wants from a woman. And once he’s got it, he’ll walk away without looking back.”
“You?” She looked at him with hurt and disbelief in her eyes. “You would do such a thing?”
“I’ve never met a man who wouldn’t, given the right circumstances.”
“That is not what I asked. I asked if you would do this. If you would lie and cheat and steal and kill to get what you want from me, and then walk away. Without looking back.”
He opened his mouth to say yes, but the lie stuck in his throat. He had never been that type of man. But damn, she shouldn’t trust him so much. He wanted her. Wanted everything she had to give. But he wasn’t ready to take a wife, and she had no business ruining her life on him.
“I think,” she said quietly, “that you would like me to believe these things of you, but I canna, Carson. I have seen the man you are. If you dinna want me, then ‘tis I who should apologize. I shouldna hae said aught when you pulled away from me.”
“Not want you?” He nearly laughed with the irony of the situation. With a hand that no longer trembled with cold, he reached out and stroked her cheek. The way she closed her eyes and leaned into his touch was nearly his undoing. “I want you much more than is wise.”
“Why?” Her eyes opened slowly. “Why is wanting me unwise?”
“Because,” he said bluntly, “I’m not looking for a wife, and you should not give yourself to any man but your husband.”
She laughed and pulled away from his touch. “You talk of giving. I had more in mind to take.”
At her bald comment, a certain part of Carson’s anatomy jerked stiffly to awareness. “Dammit, Winter Fawn, you—”
“Never mind,” she told him. “I wouldna take from an unwilling man.”
Despite himself, Carson laughed. “Oh, honey, I am anything but unwilling. How many men have you been intimate with?”
“Intimate? You mean, mated with?”
He pursed his lips. “That’s as good a word as any. How many?”
She looked away again. “None.”
“That’s what I thought. That’s how it should be. When you take a husband—”
“You mean when my uncle or my grandfather or my father chose a husband for me, whether he be to my liking or not.”
“They would not chose someone unworthy, would they? Someone you truly couldn’t love?”
“My uncle chose Crooked Oak. Love? There is not even a liking between us. Not from my side.”
<
br /> “Your father wouldn’t agree to Crooked Oak. Not now.”
“I know not what is in my father’s mind. I see him for a few days every spring and that is all. He canna abide to be around me longer than that.”
Carson stared, stunned. “Why do you say that? He loves you.”
Her smile was sad. “Perhaps. But still he leaves. I fear he will marry me off to the first man he sees, just so he will not need to worry about me.”
“I think you’re wrong about that.”
She eyed him from the corner of her eye. A sly smile played across her lips. “He might even try to give me to you. He likes you.”
“Oh, no.” Carson shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no. I’ve had one wife. I don’t need another one.”
Winter Fawn laughed. “I see panic in your eyes. Do not worry, Car-son Du-la-ney,” she said, giving his name the halting pronunciation of her people. “I willna let him talk you into such a thing, since ye be so reluctant. I dinna want a husband who doesna like to touch me.”
Carson opened his mouth to again deny the charge, then snapped it shut. What the hell was he thinking to try to convince her how much he liked touching her? He was supposed to be talking her—and himself—out of such behavior. He had no business trifling with Innes MacDougall’s daughter. The man would cut off Carson’s balls and ram them down his throat.
The wind howled and the storm raged for more than twenty-four hours. Outside the cabin, snow piled in drifts, and the supply of firewood dwindled.
Inside, the cabin retained a meager warmth. Their clothes dried. The buffalo robe also dried, allowing Carson and Winter Fawn to keep at least the semblance of distance between them.
But when they slept, their bodies ignored the restraints Carson placed upon them. In sleep, Winter Fawn instinctively sought his warmth and nearness. Carson shifted closer to her softness. More than once they woke in each other’s arms.
Each time, Carson quickly retreated. And each time, it grew progressively more difficult to remember why he should. Constantly he had to remind himself that she was Innes’s daughter; Innes trusted him. She was innocent, and Carson felt duty-bound to see that she remained that way.
There wasn’t much to do in the cabin but eat, sleep, pace the dirt floor, and brave the blizzard for more firewood. Whenever he had to go out for wood, Carson also checked on the horse and mule. He took them water they’d got from melting snow, and gave them more grain.
Their second morning in the cabin they woke, as usual, in each other’s arms. But this time something dragged Carson’s attention from the heat in his loins and the woman in his arms. Something was different. Something…
Frowning, he raised his head and stared at the door.
In his arms, Winter Fawn stiffened. “What is it?” she whispered.
“Shh. Listen.”
Winter Fawn half rose, barely registering that for once, Carson held on to her rather than turning her loose. Were they out there? Had Crooked Oak somehow managed to find them? She strained for a sound that would tell her. All she heard was the pounding of her own heart. “I hear nothing,” she whispered.
A slow, wide grin curved Carson’s lips. “That’s because there’s nothing to hear.”
“Wha— No wind! The storm has stopped!”
“Sounds like it.” With a laugh, Carson stood and swooped her up in his arms. In one stride he was at the door and flinging it open.
Dazzling sunlight reflected off the snow-covered landscape and nearly blinded them. Icy air stung their nostrils. Winter Fawn’s eyes stung from both. She looped her arms around Carson’s neck and hoped he wouldn’t realize he was holding her. She liked being in his arms. “It’s beautiful,” she said, looking out at the fantastic shapes the wind carved into the snow.
“And dangerous,” Carson added lightly. “Never forget that beauty can be dangerous.” He looked down at her, his blue eyes as bright and dazzling as the sky. His head lowered toward hers.
Winter Fawn’s breath backed up in her lungs.
“Beautiful.” His breath brushed her lips. “And dangerous.” Closer, closer he leaned. “Like you.”
She forgot all about the cold and the blinding snow. Her fingers flexed against his neck. “I am not dangerous.”
“Aren’t you?” came his husky question. Then his lips took hers softly.
Winter Fawn felt her breath glide smoothly out of her body. She felt her bones weaken and turn to water. Had she been on her feet, she knew she would have felt the earth tilt beneath her. She felt his mouth, warm and firm against hers, and it was glorious. Never could she have imagined the dark taste of him, the way her heart would race, the way her mind would empty until there was only him, only his lips, his tongue, his teeth gently nibbling on her.
She understood so much in those moments when he kissed her. She now thought she knew what had put that look in her mother’s eyes, the one that made her smile as though she had swallowed the sun. That look of secret happiness whenever Smiling Woman had looked at Red Beard.
Winter Fawn also understood that this kiss, though it had yet to end and she prayed that it might never end, had already changed her life. She would never be the same again, never look at Carson the same, as a stranger she was coming to know. He was inside her now, a part of her she would carry with her forever. Her life was no longer solely her own.
Nor was her body her own any longer. Every time he looked at her now, she would remember this kiss, and her bones would melt. And she would want him to kiss her again.
How could she miss his warmth and kiss when he had yet to release her? She tightened her arms around his neck and kissed him back, determined to take all he would give her, fearing this was all there would be from this reluctant white man.
But reluctance was the farthest thing from Carson’s mind just then. He was lost. Lost in the kiss, in her warmth, her open responsiveness. Lord, but she was responsive. He wanted to take her down right then and there on the snow and find out how she would respond to something more than a kiss. He wanted all of her. Wanted to simply gobble her up.
“Oh, yeah,” he whispered against her lips. “I was right, honey, you are dangerous.”
“I think,” she said breathlessly, staring up at him, “that you are dangerous, too.”
Carson might have kissed her again. He wanted to, badly. But something else drew his attention away, and hers, too.
The wind was rising. But this was not the icy wind from the north, bringing another blizzard. This was a warm, moist wind, strong from the west.
Winter Fawn raised her face into it and sniffed. “Chinook.”
“What?”
“The wind. It is called a Chinook wind. It will melt the snow.”
Carson glanced around at the four-foot drifts against the side of the cabin, and others blocking the trail that had led them there. “In a few days, if it keeps up,” he said skeptically.
Winter Fawn shook her head. “Today. It has already begun. Look.” She pointed toward the roof of the cabin.
Carson followed her gesture, amazed to see water dripping from the eaves. Amazed further that he had been so wrapped up in her, in kissing her, that he hadn’t heard the rushing plops.
With Winter Fawn still in his arms, he stepped back into the cabin and put her down. If the snow was going to melt, they would need to leave.
Chapter Ten
The snow melted so rapidly that bare patches of ground appeared across the valley before noon, growing larger each passing minute. Drifts shrank. Water stood in low lying areas, and trickled downhill wherever it could.
Carson and Winter Fawn left the cabin shortly after midday and headed north for Hardscrabble Creek and the wide pass that led through the Wet Mountains to Wet Mountain Valley. The warm Chinook wind had swept the pass clean of all but the deepest drifts by the time they reached it that afternoon.
Winter Fawn had started the trip the same way she had the day the blizzard had struck, by holding on to the cantle rather than Carson
as she rode behind him. Her wounds were much better now, and she was stronger. But that was not why she tried to sit up straight and manage without him.
It was the kiss.
Or rather, the way Carson had been able to put the kiss out of his mind the instant he stood her on her feet. He had kissed her until her head had spun, then simply walked away and started packing their gear. She had been breathless. Her entire life had been altered. Yet he appeared to be completely unaffected. Because of that, she was reluctant to hold on to him.
The first steep incline disabused her of that idea rapidly. She had to wrap her arms tightly around his waist to keep from slipping off the back end of the horse.
“How long will it take us to reach your ranch?” she asked him.
He turned his head slightly to answer. “We should get there tomorrow afternoon.”
Tomorrow afternoon. “Do you think my father and the others will be there?”
“I hope so. I expect they got there before the blizzard hit, if it even hit there.”
The sun was going down. She would spend this one last night on the trail with him, then they would reach her father. And after that? She had no idea what would happen.
Her life should have been predictable. Or as predictable as that of any of Our People. Her family should have found a good man for her husband, a man she could respect and love. She should have lived with him and borne his children. Every spring she would have taken down her lodge, packed her belongings, and gone with her band to join the rest of the tribe to follow the buffalo for the summer. Every fall she and her children and husband, should he still be living, would have come back to the foothills for the winter.
From season to season, she would have known what to expect.
Now she knew nothing about her own future.
Her father had ridden into camp, and Winter Fawn had helped free his friend. She did not know if she would ever be welcomed back. What was her grandmother thinking about her leaving? What would Crooked Oak and Two Feathers say when they returned to camp empty-handed?
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