Jed swore under his breath, lifted her away from his hungry body and lowered her to the ground. He didn’t have a damn clue whether or not his threat were possible, but two more seconds of her rubbing against him, and he’d damn sure be willing to find out.
“You won’t have to worry about crossing any more wide stretches of water,” he said, riding on, leaving Rachell to catch up. “We won’t be looking at nothin’ but dust and stone for a long while.”
Rachell sat atop Storm Cloud, a few yards from the edge of the stone cliff where Jed surveyed an endless expanse of orange rock. His dark hair was tied back at the nape of his neck with a leather thong, giving a clear view of his sharp, masculine features. The warm glow of the setting sun illuminated his profile.
Sunlight glittered off the sleek black of his hair as he tilted his head back and poured a sparkling stream of water into his open mouth. Rachell sucked in a deep breath, watching his tongue skim across his lips to pick up the remaining drops of water.
“Rachell,” he called out. “Your mouth has to be dry. Come take a drink.”
Her mouth was dry, all right, but she didn’t need water. She needed the moisture of Jed’s mouth pressed to hers. She ached to say as much, but didn’t dare. Mr. Jed was back to his original quiet, grim moods.
She dismounted and walked to the edge of the ridge to take the canteen he held out for her as his gaze moved over the dry landscape.
Rachell reached for the canteen then paused, seeing the breathtaking sight that had captured Jed’s attention. Thin, rippling waves of rock rose up from the floor of the huge canyon below. Compressed layers of many shades of orange with streaks of white, pink and black rock created a colorful maze of slender flat-topped canyon walls.
“Oh my. How beautiful.”
“Most folks rave about sunsets over the ocean, but I’ve not seen an ocean sunset that compares to the sun’s descent from over these amber canyons.”
Jed sank down, planting his handsome rear end on the dusty rock surface. “Have a seat, sugar,” he said, his open palm patting the hard ground beside him. “You’re about to see how the sun can shift and shape stone.”
He passed her the canteen as she sat beside him. She took a swig of water then scanned the wide canyon and tall red cliffs directly across from them. Just as Jed had said, the landscape began to slowly shift, changing shape and color as the descending sun played tricks on their eyes with shadows and its evening glow.
Rachell murmured her amazement, forgetting all about her frustrations and the trials of the past week as she sat beside Jed, her feet dangling over the sharp cliff.
This wasn’t the first time Jed had shared one of his favorite features of this magical landscape of living rocks. She was fascinated by his appreciation of the land as much as she was by the extraordinary natural formations of rocks he’d shown her in the past several days. She’d ridden through stone arches and seen gravity-defying towers, thin pillars of rock that held up enormous boulders.
“You certainly know your way around these stone mazes,” she said, gazing out at the last half of the sun still visible on the horizon.
Jed made a rumbling sound of agreement.
“You must have traveled through here many times.”
“I have.”
“I suppose you’ve traveled all through those canyons and amber towers.”
“Nope. That uncharted territory is as dry and dangerous as it is beautiful,” he said in an easy tone. “You can’t explore all that beauty without exploring the danger. Some things are just better to be admired from a distance.”
Rachell looked up at Jed and found him watching her, his eyes turbulent, his expression stern. It was then she felt the warmth in her left arm.
She had relaxed against him.
She saw the underlying irritation his voice hadn’t revealed. He would share the beauty of the sunset with her, but physical contact was prohibited. Rachell frowned and straightened away from him.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize I was touching you.”
Jed got to his feet. “Let’s find a spot to set up camp,” he said in a casual tone, as though she’d not said a word.
Rachell stood and walked back to her horse, wishing she could bury her emotions as efficiently as Jed apparently could.
Lying on her side of the fire, Rachell waited for sleep to put her out of her misery. She shifted beneath the thick bedding Running Bear had supplied, rolling onto her side. The blankets and heavy fur were nothing compared to the warmth of Jed’s body. Jed sat on his own pile of blankets, on his own side of the fire, hogging his body heat for himself alone.
The selfish bastard.
They’d made camp and eaten supper in complete silence. How could he be so generous with her and so cold at the same time?
She had tampered with his resolve to keep his distance from her when she’d kissed him by the river all those days back and he’d been holding a grudge ever since. Never mind that he’d kissed her plenty of times before then.
Well, it wasn’t fair! She would rather have him shout at her than endure his long bouts of silence. “You’re mad at me,” she said, unable to bear another second of the one-sided conversation in her mind.
“No, I’m not,” he answered in a neutral tone, not bothering to meet her gaze.
Rachell shoved her blankets aside and sat up to glare at him. “Bullshit!”
Jed grinned as he glanced over the fire. “Didn’t Miss Abigail teach you that swearing is unbecoming of a lady, or have I been that much of a bad influence on you?”
“You’ve been mad at me ever since I kissed you at the river,” she continued, determined to talk about the tension between them which was eating at her insides. “I see the irritation in your expression every time I bump into you or smile at you. You think I’m teasing you.”
“Are you?”
“No,” she insisted. “No more than you tease me.”
“I didn’t start that kiss at the San Juan.”
“I don’t recall forcing you to kiss me back. I only meant to give you a light thank-you kiss and then your tongue was touching mine and I couldn’t help but respond to you.”
“Is there a point to this conversation?” Jed asked, certain he didn’t need to be thinking about how his tongue danced with hers.
“Yes. You have no right to be mad at me over a kiss in which you were a willing participant.”
“I’m not mad at you. I think you’re the one who’s mad at me.”
“Well, maybe I am!”
Jed diverted his gaze from her fierce scowl. He knew full well where all her aggression was coming from. His own body was coiled with enough sexual tension to snap him in two. Rachell seemed to be having trouble containing hers. The exhaustion he could see in her eyes couldn’t be helping matters. Neither of them had slept worth a damn since leaving Running Bear’s camp.
Rachell expelled a heavy breath, capturing Jed’s attention. Keeping his distance from her only seemed to fine-tune his senses to her every movement, sound, and scent. Nothing on this earth smelled as sweet. If she happened to brush any part of his body, fire pooled in his groin.
She poked a stick at the fire, sending tiny orange specks billowing up into the dark night air.
“If I wasn’t with you,” she asked a moment later, “would you go into towns?”
“Not unless I needed a blacksmith or supplies.”
“There’s got to be military forts around here somewhere. What about them?”
“Not unless I’m in need of a good fight or lookin’ for some solitary time in a stockade.”
Her face popped up. “What? Why would—”
“What are you trying to get at?” he interjected, not wanting to delve into his past altercations with an anti-Indian military. “Is this your subtle way of telling me you’re tired of my company? You planning to seek out a cluster of town folk to abate your craving for decent conversation?”
“No,” she said evenly. “I happen to enjoy your comp
any.”
“Could’a fooled me. A moment ago you were huffed up enough to walk over here and crack my jaw.”
“Because I’m tired of you ignoring me,” she said, pinning him with a hard gaze.
“Rachell, you are hardly a woman who can be ignored. If you weren’t a woman who drew attention, you wouldn’t be in the fix you’re in now, or was Sumner the first man to try to get under your skirts?”
Her frown deepened as she dropped her gaze toward the fire. “No,” she admitted. “Scanty costumes and stuffed corsets tended to have that effect on men, but I always made my disinterest in personal relations clear from the beginning, and… Titus was always nearby.”
“If Sumner was so taken by you, he must have given you some indication.”
“Yes. He’d made propositions and the way his eyes moved over me made my skin crawl.”
Jed watched her shudder at the memory. “And you didn’t see that as a sign of danger?”
“No,” she answered, meeting his gaze. “I felt the same response toward any man who looked at me with lust in his eyes.”
Jed arched an eyebrow, thinking he’d looked at her with lust-filled eyes plenty of times. Hell, most of the time. “Honey, I am a man,” he felt inclined to point out.
A smile played across her lips. “Yes, you’re a man.”
Her sultry tone had a discomforting effect on the fit of his britches.
“An exceptional man. You don’t prey on the weak, using their weaknesses to your advantage.”
“The way Sumner did.”
“I’m ashamed to have been employed by him, but good paying jobs aren’t exactly easy to come by. We needed the money.”
“You mentioned a painting.”
Again, Rachell visibly shuddered.
“He scared you,” Jed said, watching fear darken her eyes.
“Hell, yes, he scared me!” she shouted, wrapping her arms around her raised knees. “It was…spooky. You can’t imagine my shock when I saw the life-size portrait on his office wall. The woman did look a bit like me, but I really believe he thought I was her. He had Titus murdered, then told me I was his love and that he’d not allow me to get away from him again. He locked me in one of the upstairs bedrooms of the saloon and said he’d give me some time to prepare myself for him.”
Jed’s body coiled with a murderous rage at the thought of any man forcing his attentions on her tender body.
“So I ran,” she said. “Unlike my situation in Colorado, I didn’t have to wear the bed linen. I was able to use it to climb down from the window. I retrieved a few possessions from my room and took a horse from the stables. With my money and Titus’s combined, I had enough for a train ticket clear to California. I had the station send a wire to Elizabeth, telling her I was on my way and I boarded the train. I didn’t think he’d send men after me. I never gave him my real name. I don’t know how they found me.”
She truly didn’t see how any man could be obsessed with her, but Jed sure as hell did.
“I didn’t realize I was putting my sister in danger. Had I known Titus—” Her voice cracked as tears spilled from her eyes. “I didn’t know,” she said in a hushed voice.
“I believe you,” Jed said, wanting to ease the fear and strain he saw in her gaze. He stood and walked around the low fire. Her wide eyes followed him even as he moved behind her and sat down. He leaned forward and brushed a quick, light kiss across her lips. “Don’t fret, sugar. Sumner won’t get anywhere near you.”
She smiled at his reassurance. “How’s your side?” she asked, glancing at his shirt.
“You don’t need to worry about my side. My hide’s a lot like leather, a few scuffs and scars only add character.”
“Even leather needs proper care if you want it to stay in prime condition.”
Jed resisted the urge to comment on just how prime he’d felt since making her acquaintance. Keeping his distance from her had been pure hell. After a week of restricting himself from even the slightest touch, he was experiencing some mighty painful withdrawals. His whole body ached to be near hers. With all their days on the trail, he kept expecting her to look trail-beaten and haggard, but with each passing day, despite the dust and sweat, she became more beautiful.
He placed his palms on the sides of her head and turned her pretty face away from him. His hands closed over her shoulders, his thumbs pressing against the tense muscles above her shoulder blades.
Rachell moaned, tilting her head from side to side.
He felt a soothing sense of pleasure at just being able to touch her. Perhaps cutting himself off from her touch completely wasn’t the way to go. If he just rationed himself with little bits of her, maybe he wouldn’t feel as though he were starving for her every second of every blasted day.
Testing this new method, he lowered his head, lightly grazed her neck with his teeth then quickly retreated. Her taste shot through his senses like hot sensual lightning as his fingers caressed her neck and shoulders.
Yes, sir, he felt better already.
“Jed?” Rachell said in a shivered breath.
“I just want to help you relax. Do you mind?” he asked, unable to see her expression.
“Mind? I love having your hands on me.” She groaned softly. “You have the most magical hands. I’m going to dissolve at your fingertips.”
Jed was close to about all the touching he could handle. Luckily, Rachell was already half asleep. He allowed her to lean back against him. “Feel better?” he whispered against her ear.
“Uh-huh,” she murmured.
Me too, he said in the silence of his mind.
“Why would the military want to put you in a stockade?” she asked a moment later.
Jed released a sigh, thinking he should have seen that question coming. She wasn’t one to let her curiosity go unanswered. “Honey, there aren’t enough hours in the night to rehash my past with an anti-Indian military.”
She shifted in his arms to meet his gaze. “You’ve been in their stockades before?”
“On occasion. They put plenty of effort into getting me there, but could never quite keep me.”
Her gaze clouded with worry. “Why?”
“I lived with an Indian, looked like an Indian and when I wouldn’t do what the military asked of me, I was hunted down like an Indian.”
“What did they ask of you?”
“To lie. Shuhquoy and I traveled quite a bit and were on good terms with a few tribes, people I considered my friends. When we believed the military had honorable intentions, we were happy to help where we could. But when I wouldn’t betray my friends, I was labeled a traitor and found my face on a bunch of fancy posters.”
“And they caught you?”
“A few times,” he said. “Though none quite as memorable so the first.”
She nestled closer and Jed shifted her legs over his thigh as her head rested against his shoulder. “Why the first?”
“A man tends to remember when someone steals a large chunk of his hide.”
Her eyelids that had been drifting steadily down sprang back up. “The scars on your back?”
“Yep.”
Her face creased with anger. “That’s awful! You’d done nothing wrong!”
Jed smiled. “Oh, I did plenty wrong. I was young, cocky as hell and bent on making my beliefs known.”
Her gaze roved his face. “How old were you?”
“The first time? Seventeen. They never got me back to their whipping post, but we’ve had plenty of tangles over the years.”
She reached up and stroked the black hair touching his shoulders. “You weren’t the one who cut your hair, were you?”
Shock rippled through him, her swift perception catching him off guard. “I don’t see how that matters,” he said, wanting to brush off the emotion stirred deep inside him by the concern darkening her eyes.
“Did you cut it?” she persisted.
“No. I didn’t.”
Her frown deepened as she snuggled
against him. Her eyelids drifted down. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
She was sound asleep in his arms within minutes. Jed dragged in a shuddering breath and slowly released it. This woman made him feel…too much. He pressed his lips to her hair. “Me too, Imp.” His whole life he’d been fighting battles in a war he couldn’t win.
He eased back onto her bedroll and stretched out beside her. Rachell shifted, nuzzling her face to his chest as her arm slid across his waist. She settled against him as though she had been made to sleep in his arms.
Jed tossed the blanket over them, content to hold her close without ravishing her supple body. Small rations was definitely the way to go. By the time they reached Nevada, he’d have her completely out of his system.
Chapter Fourteen
As Rachell rode through the thick forest of pines, she tugged firmly at the sides of her long fur coat, clamping out the cold morning air. Moisture beaded on the thick fuzzy cuff of her hood. She’d been stunned when Jed pulled the beautiful white coat out of their supplies a couple of days back when the terrain and climate had drastically changed, as had the scenery.
The Sierra Nevadas were thick with fresh wild spring flowers. Yesterday, as the afternoon sun had warmed them, they had ridden through lush meadows splashed by every color of the rainbow. It had been impossible for her eyes to absorb so much beauty at once.
But the mornings were cold and wet. She missed the dry Utah climate. Today they had risen during the early darkness just before dawn. Jed was determined to reach Shadow Canyon by midmorning. Even now, with the sun well into the sky, a veil of mist hung in the cold morning air.
A plume of white smoke came into view as she continued to ascend the hillside. The mercantile Jed had been telling her about was supposed to be just over the next rise.
Reaching the top of the hill, Rachell reined Storm Cloud to a halt. She wasn’t at all pleased by what she saw in the hazy distance. Tucked between a cluster of pines was what looked to be a run-down shack, pieced together with chunks of rotted wood.
“That is not a mercantile.” Rachell shifted her gaze, scanning the wide span of pine-covered hills. There wasn’t a trace of another dwelling for as far as her eyes could see. Giant ranges of granite rock rose up from the tops of tall green pines and patches of fog.
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