by Diana Palmer
She pulled him down beside her and began to prove it, the best way she knew. Long before his mind gave in to her, his body did. It was just as well to let Lisa have her divorce, he thought as his body began to surge. Just as well, indeed.
LATER THAT DAY, as he rode back toward the post, he heard sounds that alarmed him. Carefully, cautiously, he eased his automobile into the shade of some paloverde trees and cut the engine. Ordinarily he rode his horse down here, disgusted with the infernal machine that broke down more often than it served him. But he’d been in a hurry to get to Selina.
He listened. Horses. Many horses. As he watched from his concealment, a party of men—Mexicans, judging from their huge sombreros—cautiously worked their way toward Douglas.
He didn’t recognize them, but he knew they weren’t locals. There was something about them that fairly screamed of revolutionaries. They would bear watching. When he got to Fort Huachuca, he could phone the garrison in Douglas and report this troop movement. If they were operating on American territory, all hell was going to break loose soon. Perhaps there was something to those rumors of smuggling and a local junta that he’d been hearing lately.
THORN VANCE RODE over to the Lang ranch with plenty on his mind. He couldn’t get Naki to talk to him for the first time in memory. He knew the Apache was fascinated by the Langs’ bespectacled female guest, but he didn’t know what to do about it. If the man’s emotions were involved, it could be a sticky situation, especially given her brother’s opinion of Indians. He didn’t know what might come of the ill-fated relationship, and he had no authority to keep Naki away from Sissy Bates.
On the other hand, he might be able to talk to the girl if he could find an opportunity. Perhaps that would be possible on a hunting expedition, so he’d made preparations to take the Langs’ guests up into the mountains for a camping party.
Jack Lang was less than enthusiastic, but Richard showed the first real interest of his trip.
“Jolly good!” he exclaimed, aping his idol, Theodore Roosevelt. “When can we leave?”
“At first light,” Thorn told him. “I don’t want to be out after dark unless we’re encamped, given the Mexican situation.”
“Certainly. But won’t we be near the border?” Richard persisted.
“No,” Thorn assured him. “Farther away from it, if anything.”
“In that case, I’m game. How about you, sweetness?” he teased Cousin Julie, who leaned against his shoulder with pure coquetry.
“I can hardly wait,” she said huskily.
Trilby should have been jealous. She wanted to be. But when her eyes met Thorn’s curious ones, she felt her insides caving in. Her gaze lowered to his hard mouth and she wanted it with such an unexpectedly fierce need that her nails dug into her palms. She turned away to straighten a doily on the table, and all the while she felt Thorn’s eyes on her back.
“Are you bringing Samantha?” Mary Lang asked Thorn.
“Not on this trip,” he said, his voice oddly deep. “She’s staying with my cousin Curt and his wife in town.” He didn’t add that Samantha had begged to go with her father. She didn’t seem to enjoy staying with Curt and Lou. Why hadn’t he ever noticed that before? He’d have to talk with her about it sometime soon.
“How nice for her. She’ll miss you, of course,” Mary said.
Thorn didn’t agree, but he was too polite to say so. “I’ll be by at first light to pick you all up,” he said.
“Thorn, you’re welcome to take my car, too, if you need it,” Jack began.
“We’ll go up on horses. It’s the only way to get there, I’m afraid,” Thorn said. “If any of your party can’t ride…”
“Don’t be silly.” Richard chuckled. “Ben and Sissy and I grew up on horses, and Julie rides like a native.”
“Trilby doesn’t, though,” Thorn observed.
“I can learn,” she said curtly.
“Indeed you can,” he replied, watching her. “I’ll teach you.”
She had visions of that, of Thorn’s hands on her arms, on her body as he sat behind her and held her on the horse. She felt hot. Her hand went automatically to a fan and she began to move it against the stifling heat.
“I tried to teach her,” Richard said, stung by Thorn’s attention to Trilby. “She’s very slow—”
“That’s unfair, Richard,” Sissy cut in. “You were impatient and you shouted at her. You aren’t a good instructor. I expect Thorn will be more patient.”
“As patient as I need to be,” he said, and his eyes punctuated the words, making Trilby even more self-conscious than she had been. She flushed as he stared at her.
Richard watched the byplay and was determined to throw a stick into the spokes for the manly Mr. Vance. He didn’t want Trilby falling hard for that rustic rancher. He meant to make certain nothing came of the man’s regard.
“Richard, you look very pensive,” Julie murmured.
“Do I? I wonder why.” He looked down at her and smiled. She almost purred. He was going to do something about her outrageous flirting one day, he promised himself, and see if she could make good on all those commitments her eyes were making.
THEY STARTED OFF early the next morning, a small caravan going down the dusty road. Trilby sat uneasily in the saddle, so nervous that her horse almost bolted as the others became smaller and smaller in the distance.
“Here, this won’t do, little one,” Thorn said gently. He dismounted, reached up, and plucked Trilby from the saddle. He carried her to his own horse while she clung to him, oblivious to the faint curiosity in the eyes of his men as they rode past.
“What—what are you doing?” she faltered.
“I’m going to take you up in front of me. Don’t fidget. You’ll upset Randy.”
“Who’s Randy?”
“My horse.” He eased her up into the saddle and quickly mounted behind her. His lean arms came around to take the reins, and she felt the immense power of his whipcord body behind her as he guided the big bay gelding onto the trail that led to the mountains. His arm contracted around her waist to hold her securely. “All right?” he asked in her ear.
She felt her heart beating and wondered if he could. “Yes,” she whispered.
His mouth eased just under her ear and against her neck where the pulse beat wildly. “You smell of flowers, Trilby,” he breathed. “Sweet and fragrant.”
Her body trembled in his embrace as she struggled with incredibly powerful longings. “Thorn,” was all she could manage.
His lean hand opened and pressed deeply into her stomach, pulling her back against him in an intimacy she should have railed against. But all she could do was moan and shiver a little at the feel of his body.
“My God!” he ground out. He sucked in his breath, maddened by the submission. “What a time to give in to me, Trilby!”
“I’m not…giving in,” she managed huskily. But her eyes were closed and she was throbbing all over.
He spurred his mount and dashed up to the rest of the party, a man driven by desires he could neither satisfy nor indulge.
Julie and Richard were trotting side by side, talking all the way. Sissy was riding, very sedately, next to Ben.
“Naki didn’t come with you?” Trilby asked when she trusted her voice again.
“He’s already at the camp, scouting around. You do know that he’s infatuated with Sissy?”
“And she with him,” she agreed. “But it’s all right. Sissy is a good girl.”
“Sure she is. But Naki is a man. All man. And he isn’t more than human. He wants her. Make sure you keep her with you as much as possible. I don’t know if either of them realizes it yet, but there’s a very powerful physical chemistry growing there. Alone in the woods, nothing would stop them.”
“They’re adults,” she said slowly.
“So are we,” he whispered, and pulled her closer to him. “And do you want to pretend that you aren’t hot and cold all over with my body this close to yours?”
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She swallowed, her eyes closing as he drew her back against him yet again. “You…mustn’t,” she choked.
“I must,” he said through his teeth. “God, Trilby, I’m in agony, can’t you tell?”
“It isn’t…me,” she said, wounded. “You think I’m something I’m not. You—you still don’t believe that I haven’t been a loose woman.”
“That has nothing to do with what I feel,” he denied. “Trilby, I know you aren’t what I first suspected. I’ve told you that a dozen times!”
“But you treat me that way!”
“I treat you as if I want you,” he said, his breath hot and unsteady. “I do. It’s not because I think of you as a loose woman. It’s because I want you with every part of me. I dream about being with you, completely with you. You’re in my very blood, Trilby.”
The arm holding her was faintly unsteady, and she was frightened of the emotion it betrayed. She wanted to kiss him so much that it was almost painful, but she couldn’t—didn’t dare—give in to it. It was sinful to want this sort of thing outside marriage. “It’s wrong to feel like this,” she said tautly. “It’s bad, Thorn.”
“It is not,” he replied, his voice as strained as her own. “I’ve tried to tell you ever since the fiesta that it’s not wrong. What we feel for each other is rare. Why can’t you accept it?”
“I…love Richard,” she whispered.
“Richard is a habit,” he said coldly. “One you’re about to lose your taste for, once you discover that he belongs to his cousin.”
“He doesn’t!”
“Open your eyes and see. They’re inseparable. He’d die if she asked him to. Perhaps he doesn’t realize it yet, but she has him in her dainty little hands.”
He was right. She knew that he was, but Richard was her only protection against what she was feeling for Thorn.
“But they’re cousins,” she reasoned.
“And surely you know that cousins can marry,” he replied.
“I don’t want to discuss it.”
“That’s right, Trilby, bury your head in the sand. But what is building between us won’t be denied much longer. I know it. And so do you.”
She did know, but she wouldn’t admit it. She held her body stiffly and didn’t give an inch all the way up into the mountains.
It was cool and dark and tree-studded near the stream where they pitched camp. It was high enough, too, to be defensible if they needed to defend it. Trilby wasn’t supposed to know that. She’d overheard Thorn discussing it with Mosby Torrance, who’d gone along despite Jack Lang’s protests that he was too old.
The tents for the women were pitched near the fire, while the men put theirs up in a ring around the inner circle. It would afford more protection if they got in a tight spot.
“You didn’t want to bring us,” Trilby remarked to Thorn after the cowboys had prepared a wonderfully filling meal of beef stew and biscuits over the open campfire.
Thorn was sprawled on the blanket that covered his saddle, his hat off, his spurs and chaps tossed beside him. But he was still wearing his sidearm.
“Damned right, I didn’t want to come up here with Mexico seething to blow apart just down the road,” he agreed, half listening to the Mexican with the guitar who was serenading the rest of the party. Naki wouldn’t come into the camp at all, and Sissy had noticed and been hurt by it. Not only that, he ignored her completely around the others and acted as if he’d been insulted when she spoke to him once. Since then, her friend had been withdrawn and morose.
“Then why did you agree to bring us here?” Trilby asked.
He turned his head to where she sat perched on a small boulder, watching him. “Because I didn’t like the way you were looking at Bates,” he said bluntly. “He’s a city boy. A fop. You think you want him because he’s the only single man you’ve known. But I’m here now, and I want you.”
She flushed. “I don’t want you, Mr. Vance,” she said.
His dark eyes glittered into hers and there was a faint, mocking smile on his lean face. “The hell you don’t,” he said softly.
She averted her eyes with a shocked, heated gasp and then refused to look at him again. She wandered back to the rest of the group on shaky legs and sat beside a subdued Sissy while the Mexican sang of broken hearts and wistful dreams.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SISSY WENT TO the creek to get water for more coffee, her mind not quite on what she was doing. It was cold at night, this late in November, and there were thick clouds drifting overhead. More than likely it was going to rain. Somehow, it seemed appropriate for that to happen. She felt like a rainy day inside.
As she bent to rinse the dark blue–speckled metal pot in the swift-running water and then fill it, she heard something. It was a musical sound, haunting and lovely in the stillness. The Mexican with the guitar was still playing in the distance, but this was close. Very close.
She got to her feet and listened. The sound came closer. She lifted the pot and moved down the wooded path away from the stream. As she approached a spreading paloverde tree, she made out a tall human form leaning against it.
Naki had a colorful blanket around his shoulders and he was playing, of all things, a flute. He was playing it quite well, too.
She was stung by his earlier behavior and started to march right past him, but he moved into her path.
“Am I supposed to be flattered that, having ignored me completely all day, you’ve decided to play a flute for me tonight?” she asked stiffly.
He smiled faintly. “It is our way not to notice women when others are present. Didn’t you know?”
She held the coffeepot tighter. It was cold against her breasts. “A—a custom?”
“That’s right. Men and women don’t even look at one another in camp. Any display of affection or attention toward the opposite sex is considered bad manners.”
“Oh.”
“You didn’t know.” He nodded. “You have a great deal to learn.” He moved toward her, his steps faintly menacing. He looked very alien in the fading light, tall and powerful and overwhelming. “Apache men stop bathing together when they leave boyhood behind. Even when we go swimming, we always wear a breechclout. Modesty, shyness, these are Apache.”
She looked up as he reached her. “And…the flute?”
“Lovemaking,” he said softly.
She flushed. Her skin seemed to go hot. The hands holding the coffeepot were numb.
He handed her the flute and took the coffeepot away, setting it gently on the ground. He opened one side of his blanket.
“Is that…meaningful?” she asked hesitantly. “That gesture?”
“Very,” he replied.
She stepped under his arm without further prompting, and he enclosed his arm, and the blanket, around her shoulders.
“Now what?” she whispered, thrilling to the warm strength of his body so close. She felt safe and secure and adored.
“Now we can talk, until we’re discovered,” he answered. “Or I can play for you.”
She handed him the flute and smiled.
The music was soft and slow, and she knew that she’d remember it all her life. There should have been stars or at least a full moon, but there was only the cloudy night and the faint mist of rain that began to fall.
She didn’t care if she drowned. She’d been transported to another place, another time. She closed her eyes and laid her cheek on his shoulder.
“Alexandra.”
“Yes?” she whispered.
“Take your hair down.”
She fumbled with hairpins until the wealth of her dark hair was tumbling in waves down over her shoulders and back. It fell to her waist.
“Yes,” he said softly, touching it with the hand that held the flute. “Yes, it’s lovely. You never wear it like this?”
“It…wouldn’t be proper,” she said hesitantly.
“Cultural taboos?”
“Perhaps.”
His lean hand smoothed
over it. Bravely she lifted her own fingers to his thick hair and touched it, fascinated with its cool cleanness, its length. He bent and brushed his cheek over hers.
“Apaches…don’t kiss, do they?” she whispered.
“Never after marriage. Rarely before.” His mouth eased toward hers. “But I was married to a Mexican woman, and she loved to kiss me. She taught me how.”
The last words went into her mouth. His hard lips had covered hers and his arms folded her completely against his broad chest. She stiffened a little and caught her breath.
He lifted his head. “You haven’t done this before?”
She swallowed. “Well…no, actually,” she confessed. Her big eyes met his. “You see, I’m not pretty, and I’m educated.”
He smiled gently. “Is it offensive to you, to have my mouth on yours?”
Her body tingled. “Oh, no. No.”
His hand found her face and his thumb tilted her small chin. “If I kiss you softly, will it make you less afraid?”
“I’m…not afraid,” she said unsteadily. “Really, I’m not.”
“Apache women are chaste,” he whispered. “Like you…”
She welcomed him this time. His mouth was hard and warm and moist, and she very much liked the way it felt when he increased its slow, deep pressure on her lips. Her hands clutched at his shirt and she made a tiny sound.
His hands tangled in her hair even as her own were burrowing up through his to the strong nape of his neck. Her body began to tremble with a strange, throbbing sort of pleasure. She wanted to get closer to him, but he was already holding her so firmly that she could feel his chest flattening her soft breasts.
He lifted his head quite suddenly. The feel of her body weakened him. His legs were trembling because he wanted her so badly. But this couldn’t happen. He could no sooner dishonor her than he could fly.
He moved her chastely back to his side and pulled that blanket back around them. His breath was unsteady as he began to play the flute again, but in a little bit it calmed. Sissy trembled as she clung to him. It took a long time until her heartbeat calmed.