Adam was gone nearly all day, and though she fought with her bonds, he had tied her too securely for her to escape easily. Her mouth was dry from the gag and her wrists were raw where she had struggled against the rawhide; she was beginning to be really fearful that he had abandoned her to die when she heard the sound of a horse's approach. Weak-kneed with relief, she watched as he rode up to her as if he had left only moments ago and had not deserted her.
He was smiling as he swung out of the saddle and walking over to her, untied her gag.
"You bastard!" she raged. "Don't you ever go off and leave me like that again."
"Ah, you did miss me," he drawled, a teasing glint in the dark blue eyes. Effortlessly he reached up for the key that had hung so temptingly above her head all day.
Savanna growled something ugly under her breath and Adam laughed.
"I'm sorry," he said as he proceeded to finish freeing her. "I never meant to be gone this long, but you'll be happy to know that I managed to gain us a few much-needed supplies."
"How?" she snapped, rubbing her bruised wrists. "You haven't any money. Or have you added thievery to your list of misdeeds?"
Adam didn't reply, and walking over to his horse, he reached for a medium-sized cloth bundle and tossed it to her. "Treasure these meager offerings—I labored very hard for them." At Savanna's look of disbelief, he smiled suggestively. "The lady's husband and eldest son have left the plantation and gone to New Orleans for six weeks, taking the huskiest slaves with them, and there were several, ah, tasks that only a man with my abilities could accomplish."
Outraged, she glared at him, the image of him lolling around all day in the bed of another woman while she had been left abandoned leaping into her mind. Beneath the rage, Savanna experienced an odd feeling of something that came perilously close to jealousy at the thought of him with another woman, and turning her back on him to hide her emotions, she tore open the cloth bundle.
Inside she found an array of odds and ends: a tiny packet of sugar, a bit of salt, a small pouch of coffee, a slab of smoked pork and a bag of beans. The food items made Savanna's mouth water, but it was two of the other articles included in the bundle that made her feel like she had discovered treasure: an old comb and a partial bar of soap. There was also a worn white shirt, a pair of equally worn brown breeches, two scuffed boots, a slightly moth-eaten wool hat with a floppy brim and a razor.
The razor Adam promptly removed from the pile and said, "As soon as we find a decent stream, I'll have use for this. As for the clothing, I think you'll find it more appropriate for the journey than that garment you're presently wearing."
Savanna had grown to despise her wretched brown gown, but at Adam's words, she decided that she was actually very fond of it and had no intention of getting rid of it—and certainly not to trade it for clothing that he had acquired by spending his time with another woman. Her aquamarine eyes very green, she glanced at Adam and said haughtily, "If this is all you earned today, you must not have pleased the lady that much."
Adam's mouth tightened and he shot her a narrow-eyed look that made Savanna's heart pound in her chest. There was a tense moment and then he smiled and ran a finger down her cheek. "Believe me, the lady was pleased," he said softly. "Women usually are with my efforts."
There was no mistaking what he meant and Savanna's face blazed rosily as she jerked away from him. Muttering under her breath, she angrily piled the foodstuffs to one side of the clothing, wishing viciously that just for once she could get the better of him.
They spent the night as they had the previous one, and as he had done the morning before, Adam woke Savanna while it was still dark. She had been certain that she wouldn't be able to sleep a wink with him lying at her side, but again that assumption had proved false. Despite his disturbing nearness and the shackles that bound them together, Savanna had fallen asleep almost as soon as her head had hit the ground.
No time was wasted breaking camp and, despite the addition to their stores, breakfast had been another handful of corn. When the sun finally rose, they had been on the move for nearly an hour and Savanna was bitterly resigned to another day of hard riding. As the sun climbed higher in the bright blue Texas sky, they continued to ride steadily southwest, and some three hours later, hungry, tired and miserably conscious of the grime on her body, she was concentrating so furiously on what a coldhearted, mean-spirited bastard her captor was that when he reined his horse to a stop, she wasn't aware of it for several minutes. It finally dawned on her that they weren't moving and she glanced resentfully over at him.
"Why are we stopping? Have you caught sight of another lonely plantation mistress who is in need of your services?" she asked sarcastically.
Swift as a tiger, Adam reached for her, freeing her hands and jerking her off the horse, he dragged her across the front of his saddle. Though her breasts were pressed tightly against his chest and her arms were held in a viselike grip, she glared unrepentantly at his dark, angry features. His sapphire-blue eyes hard, his mouth thin and his temper barely suppressed, he growled, "Keep taunting me that way and I'm liable to start believing that you'd like to avail yourself of my services."
Savanna's breath came out in a furious hiss. "Don't delude yourself! I'd never want you."
"Shall we see about that?" Adam inquired silkily the second before his knowing mouth came down on hers. There was nothing seductive about his kiss—he was angry, for a lot of different reasons, and he didn't give a damn whether she wanted his kiss or not. He was driven to have the taste of her on his tongue, to feel her in his arms again, and he was determined to prove to her that she needed his touch just as desperately as he wanted hers.
He might have succeeded in his quest if Savanna hadn't been quite so blazingly furious and hadn't been promising herself not to let his practiced lovemaking blind her to reality again. For just a second, the same wild excitement that his touch aroused swept through her and her lips parted helplessly under the hungry pressure of his, but then she remembered who he was and who she was and she grabbed handfuls of his dark hair, yanking as hard as she could and biting his marauding tongue.
There was a muffled curse from Adam and then Savanna found herself tossed to the ground. "Christ!" he burst out, half enraged, half astonished. "What the hell got into you?"
Ignoring her smarting bottom, Savanna said sweetly, "I told you that I didn't want you."
The blue eyes narrowed and something about the set of that very masculine jaw sent a thrill of fear through Savanna. Cursing her unruly tongue, she was on her feet in an instant, running blindly through the pine woods. So caught up in a primitive need to escape the retaliation she had glimpsed in those hard blue eyes, she simply ran, heedless of the direction, of the vines and branches that slapped and clawed at her, deaf to the sound of the thundering hooves of Adam's horse galloping close behind her.
It was only when Adam's arm suddenly snaked around her waist and she was lifted effortlessly from the ground and thrown across the front of his saddle that sanity returned and she realized how hopeless had been her instinctive urge to escape. It dawned on her with the force of a blow that there was no escape, that she was totally at the mercy of this man—and this man had no reason to treat her kindly.
Swamped by a feeling of helplessness, Savanna struggled halfheartedly as Adam guided his horse back to where they had originally stopped. The saddle horn was digging into her belly, and with her head dangling down one side of the horse and her legs down the other, she wasn't in much of a position to put up a fight anyway.
Adam hadn't said a word, and when he pulled his horse to a stop, she waited tensely for the angry tirade she was certain he would unleash upon her—that or something even more terrifying. To her astonishment, he simply dumped her on the ground and, dismounting himself, said dryly, "Rape isn't something that I find stimulating, so calm your maidenly fears."
Warily she eyed him as he moved around securing the horses and rummaging about in the saddlebags. Just as
if the previous minutes had never been, he threw a packet at her and nodded in a direction behind her. "That's why I stopped. Clear water is extremely rare around here, and I don't know about you, but I prefer to bathe in water that I can at least see through."
Savanna turned and a sigh of pure bliss came from her as she stared at the small, tear-shaped pond that lay before her. Unusual for this area of Texas, where the streams and rivers were normally muddy with silt, the pool was nearly crystal clear, except for some patches of duckweed and bladderwort that grew along the far side where a few trees had fallen into the water and the occasional fish and turtle could be seen lazily swimming in its turquoise depths. A series of tiny waterfalls splashed over rocks and cascaded into it at the narrow end, and crowding near, in wildly irregular patches, was all manner of jungle-like vegetation—tupelo trees, palmettos, ferns and pitcher plants.
Savanna rose to her feet and, Adam and all the turmoil that he represented forgotten, walked as if mesmerized straight into the cooling embrace of the water. She didn't stop until it reached her hips. Oblivious of anything but the prospect of being clean again, she glanced over her shoulder and said imperiously, "The soap. Give it to me."
Adam laughed and reached down for the packet he had thrown at her earlier. Holding the precious bar of soap, he walked to the edge, and when Savanna scrambled toward him, he raised it out of her reach.
"I think," he said slowly, "that we need to call a temporary truce. Enticing though the prospect might be, I don't relish chaining you to a stump while you bathe and wash your gown, nor do I want to keep a constant eye on you while discovering if my skin is the same color it was before I had the misfortune to meet up with you and Micajah." He sent her a hard look. "Have I your word that for the time we are here you won't try to escape?"
"I promise," Savanna vowed, not daring to hope that he was actually going to believe her—especially since she had no intention of keeping the promise.
Something in her face must have given her away, because Adam snorted and remarked dryly, "Very well, if that's the way you want it."
His hand shot out and she was dragged unceremoniously up next to him. The soap was tossed on the ground as Adam smiled down at her; there was something in that smile that made Savanna suddenly very uneasy. His eyes locked with hers, he drawled, "We could have done this the easy way, but since you seem to want to do it the hard way, I see no reason why I shouldn't get a certain amount of pleasure out of it."
Before she divined his intentions, he had deftly undone the fastenings of her gown and in one swift movement had bared her body to the waist. Savanna gasped , but there was an odd excitement mingling with her outrage as he boldly looked at the naked temptation before his eyes.
Beneath her gown, her skin was milky-white, only the apricot-tinted areolas of her breasts and her small nipples breaking the smooth, silky expanse of pale flesh. She was the loveliest sight Adam had ever seen, with all that alabaster skin and that bright red hair tumbling about her shoulders. He stared at her nakedness as if he had never seen a woman before, his gaze roaming in stunned appreciation over her slender shoulders down to the taut, generous curves of her bosom. The upper part of her gown was bunched at her narrow waist, which prevented further exploration on his part, but it didn't matter. His gaze returned to those lovely, lovely breasts.
A note of awe in his voice, he muttered, "Jesus, sweetheart! Who would have suspected it." He tried to drag his eyes away from those soft, tempting mounds, but he could not and his breathing became ragged as he imagined precisely what those pouting little nipples would taste like...
To Savanna's embarrassment, as he stared at her, her nipples swelled, and the satisfied smirk that curved his lips had her trembling with rage. There was no use fighting the firm grip he kept on one of her arms as he looked his fill, and ignoring the shameful betrayal of her body, in a voice filled with freezing disdain, she said, "If you're through ogling me like some ill-mannered, backwoods cretin..."
Adam sent her a crooked grin and, shaking his head, murmured, "If you'll remember, sweetheart, you started this. I gave you a chance, but you didn't take it. Besides, for the first time since I made your acquaintance, I'm actually enjoying myself."
Savanna's eyes flashed and she lunged at him, but Adam avoided her charge and after a brief tussle had events well in hand. Grinning down into her furious face as she thrashed against the strong arms that bound her to him, he said mockingly, "You know, even with that bad temper of yours, I'm beginning to see why Micajah put up with you. Beneath that ridiculous excuse for a garment you've been wearing is a body that men only dream about... and I'm eager to see if the rest of you is as appealing as what I've seen so far."
Despite Savanna's struggles, Adam soon had the offending gown stripped from her body. If he had thought her a seductive baggage before, the sight of her flat stomach and long, shapely legs, coupled with the fire-bright curly triangle at the top of her thighs, made his mouth go dry with a fierce desire he had never experienced in his life. What had been a game until this point became something else; and, aware of the inferno burning low in his belly and the swollen, rigid weight between his legs, he shook his head as if to clear away the explicit images of her parting those long alabaster thighs and of his body slowly merging with hers....
There was a glazed look on his face that made Savanna struggle more violently, and fearing the worst, she warned him breathlessly, "Don't you dare touch me, you bastard! I'll kill you if you do."
Her words brought Adam back to reality and he smiled grimly, dodging her flailing fists.
"I'm sure you'd try, sweetheart, but I doubt you'd succeed." Manfully ignoring the promptings of his body, he gave her a sharp shove and she stumbled wildly backward, trying to regain her balance before falling into the water with a large splash.
The water wasn't deep and Savanna came up sputtering, only to remember at the last moment that she was naked. Instantly she hunkered down, knees to her chest, her hair hanging in wet rat tails down her face and back, and glared at her tormentor.
Her garments, what was left of them, swirled at his booted feet and Adam picked them up and threw the sodden mass at her. "After you've scrubbed them and I've laid them out to dry, I'll give you the soap to use on that delectable little hide of yours."
Muttering, she snatched up the clothing, and retreating a safe distance away from him, she treaded water and stared around her. It was true that she was naked, but she had her clothes in her hands and Adam was still on the shore. If she could swim to the other side and get far enough into the forest before he realized what she was up to...
Adam's voice startled her, interrupting her thoughts, and she was even more startled when her gaze swung over to him and she discovered he had gotten the rifle and was aiming it at her.
"Now, then, sweetheart," he said levelly, "I would put any idea you may have of escaping out of your head. Try to swim away and I'll shoot you—not to kill you, let me assure you, but just to slow you down enough." He smiled, not pleasantly, and added, "I promise that it will hurt like the devil, too."
With one last, yearning glance at the far shore, Savanna swam over to the base of the small waterfall, the brown gown floating behind her. Coldly ignoring him, but keeping as much of herself underwater as she could, she used a couple of the rocks nearby to pound her garments, and when everything was as clean as it could be without hot water and soap, she wrung them out and tossed them onto dry ground.
Looking back at him, she asked caustically, "Satisfied?"
A twisted smile curved Adam's mouth. "Not at the present, but I expect that before too much longer I will be... gratifyingly so."
Savanna could have bitten her tongue off. Her eyes a dark, stormy blue-green, she was unwilling to leave herself open to further suggestive remarks and snapped, "May I have the soap now?"
Adam placed the small bar near the shore and murmured, "It's all yours, spitfire." Turning his back on her, he walked over to where the horses were tied.
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She eyed the back of his tall form for several suspicious seconds, but then, deciding that this was the only privacy he was likely to give her, she quickly swam to the soap and snatched it up. She had expected a trick, that he would wait until she was half out of the water and then turn and stare at her nakedness, but he hadn't, and she was baffled as she retreated to deeper water. She wasted a few moments speculating on his motives and actions, but the sun-warmed pool and the faint lavender scent of the soap soon turned her thoughts to more pleasant avenues.
The water felt wonderful—invigorating, almost bath-hot for a few inches on the surface, but the depths were cool and refreshing, and the soap...
She purred with delight as she lathered her dirty hair and rubbed the lavender-scented bar along her skin. For a time, Adam, Micajah, all her troubles retreated and she took pleasure in washing away the sweat and grime of the past horrible weeks, never giving a thought to the dangers that might lurk in the pond. Oblivious of everything, she swam and played like a young otter in the middle of the pond, where the water was deepest, and even surprised herself by laughing out loud.
It was Adam's voice shockingly near that brought her painfully back to reality. "Before the soap is all gone, I'd like to borrow it," he said dryly.
She spun around and, to her horror, there he was, not two feet away from her, his hair wet and his naked shoulders rising above the turquoise water. Her gaze dropped and she was stunned at the revealing clarity of the pool waters. It was immediately obvious that he was as naked as she and that there were great differences between her own slender body and his more powerful one. His broad chest and flat stomach were covered with a mat of dark hair that, just below his waist, arrowed seductively downward. She wanted desperately to look away, but she simply could not stop her eyes from following the arrow's path, her gaze widening when she realized that he was fully erect.
Almost accusingly, her eyes swept up to meet his sardonic gaze. "It's not," he said coolly, "something that I have a lot of control over. And if you don't want to find out exactly how little control I have at the moment, you'll hand me the soap and keep a safe distance away."
Each Time We Love Page 13