Beloved Outcast

by Pat Tracy

  Her lips tingled. There was a strange unraveling sensation throughout her body. She felt the touch of his firm mouth in a myriad of forbidden places, places that pulsed with tremulous urgency. A deep shudder coursed through her. Enough! her mind warned. Not nearly enough, countered an awakening part of her that wanted to prolong the fiercely pleasurable closeness.

  He raised his head.

  She couldn’t speak. Instead, she shifted restlessly beneath him.

  Something hot and powerful flickered in his already heated gaze. “Hold still, Victoria.”

  “I will not!”

  She heard the raw desperation in her voice. It jarred her as much as her vulnerable position beneath Logan Youngblood.

  He had the nerve to smile at her. And it wasn’t even the nasty, smug kind of smile that she could have worked up some resentment toward. Instead, a hint of tenderness tinged his expression, shaking her determination to fight him to the last breath in her body to preserve her honor.

  “If you keep wiggling, Victoria, something is going to happen between us I’m sure you’d rather avoid.”

  Her gaze narrowed. She’d been right about him. He was a pillager and a plunderer!

  “I’ll die before I let you have your way with me.”

  Without warning, his mouth swooped down on hers. This kiss was very different from the first. It was hard and swift and showed not one iota of tenderness.

  It didn’t take him long to finish his dastardly assault. When he raised his dark head above her again, she felt as if she’d been branded by his quietly savage possession.

  Barely restrained violence simmered in eyes that had moments before been unexpectedly gentle. “If I decided to take you, your puny resistance wouldn’t be enough to stop me.”

  She wanted to hurl his threat back in his face, but he’d demonstrated quite effectively that her objections to his physical conquest meant nothing to him.

  “Please…”

  She loathed pleading, but she had no intention of being used by this ruffian. She promised herself that the moment she gained her freedom, she was going to get a knife and cut his black heart from the broad chest that was presently squishing the air from her lungs. Her hands fisted around the material of his shirt. Maybe she’d speed things up a bit and use the ax.

  Satisfaction simmered in his gaze.

  She decided upon the ax.

  “I wasn’t trying to, as you so melodramatically put it, ‘have my way with you,”’ he began curtly. “I slept next to you last night, not with you. You were the one who rolled to my side of the bedding. You were the one who invaded my territory. You were the one who draped yourself across me.”

  “I did no such thing!” she protested, but she had the sinking feeling that he told the truth. When they were small and shared the same bed, her sister, Annalee, always had claimed Victoria took more than her fair portion of the mattress.

  “Another thing,” he said through gritted teeth. “I haven’t had the…pleasure of being with a woman for several months now.”

  Victoria’s cheeks burned with mortification. She knew what he was telling her, knew with a vengeance, now that she’d sorted out how men and women…fit together. How could he reveal such a private matter to her?

  “That’s hardly any of my business,” she gasped, deeply offended by his directness.

  Twin flames smoldered in his darkened gaze. “For as long as we’re together, it definitely is your business.”

  She swallowed. A powerful force she’d heretofore been oblivious of ignited his gaze. She sensed that Logan Youngblood was deadly serious, and that she’d better pay heed to his remarks.

  “All right,” she conceded shakily.

  “All right, what?” he growled hoarsely.

  She blinked at him. She honestly didn’t know what she’d just agreed to.

  “I have no idea.” She didn’t bother to hide her bewilderment. She didn’t understand how things had spun so quickly out of control, but she blamed Logan for the entire fiasco.

  “Then I’ll spell it out for you.”

  He could spell?

  An incipient giggle trembled behind Victoria’s pursed lips. She guessed she was on the verge of giving way to hysterical laughter. She’d only done so once or twice in her whole life. It didn’t seem to matter that this was a perfectly awful moment to surrender to irreverent amusement.

  She wasn’t really amused, after all. She was just a bit…unhinged. This was the first time she’d ever carried on a conversation with a man spread across her reclining body.

  “Keep your distance, and nothing of a…personal nature will happen between us.”

  She took immediate exception to his arrogant manner and his implication that this episode was in some way her fault. “Then I suggest we have this discussion in a vertical position.” She shoved hard against his unyielding chest. “Get off!”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what I should do,” he agreed, his eyes gleaming with slumberous heat.

  Instead of removing himself from atop her, however, he shifted slightly. His maleness rubbed against the juncture of her thighs. How could anything so improper feel so.nice?

  His eyelids lowered briefly. When he raised them, his gaze radiated a steely determination that alarmed her. She felt totally dominated by his masculine invasion.

  “Well?” she demanded. Her own breathless tone disheartened her. Now certainly wasn’t the time to dissolve into something of the consistency of freshly mixed bread dough. She needed to be strong, to put this incorrigible ruffian in his place. And his place was surely not on top of her!

  “Well, what?”

  Was that laughter lurking in his dark gaze? How dare this cur find anything amusing in his trespass upon her person!

  Again she shoved against him. Harder than before. A grimace tightened his features. She didn’t feel even a smidgen of sympathy. Men like Logan Youngblood brought their own misfortune upon themselves with their intemperate behavior.

  “I’m moving,” he told her. His voice sounded strangely strangled. “Just give me a minute.”

  She bit her lip. He really did appear to be in pain. Perhaps she’d pushed against him with a tad too much force. She kept forgetting about his bruised ribs.

  Using his powerful forearms, he levered himself from her. His action momentarily increased the pressure of his groin against her hips. Despite the barrier of their clothing, the subtle friction caused a pulsing tremor to squeeze something inside her that had never before made its presence known. It was all she could do not to reach out and draw Logan back to her. Deeply embarrassed by her reaction to the felon, Victoria tried to shut out the powerful sensations flooding through her.

  When Logan finally rolled from beneath the covered wagon, she lay there for several dazed moments, trying to collect her scattered senses. How strange that the simple act of putting two bodies in close proximity could incite such alarming pleasure. Had he, too, felt that fluttering sensation deep inside him?

  “Come on, Victoria, it’s time we were on our way.”

  As she crawled into the morning sunlight, she tried to put what had happened out of her mind. Because, when one got right down to it, nothing had happened. She’d just strayed to his side of the bedding. He’d rolled on top of her. And they’d kissed. A simple, straightforward series of incidents. Surely there had been nothing magical about the encounter.

  Of course, she’d never been kissed before. That must be what had indelibly imprinted the experience on her mind. Just because she felt profoundly shaken, that didn’t mean she would remember this event for the rest of her life, remember the musky male scent of Logan Youngblood, remember the lazy hunger glinting in his eyes, remember the purposeful brush of his lips against hers.

  After trying to smooth the wrinkles from her dress, she looked up and found him staring at her. Her breath caught in her throat. Goodness, he looked like a ferocious maneating dragon this morning. His mauled features accounted for a major portion of the impression, th
at and the fire burning in his gaze.

  Her mouth went dry. “What is it now, Mr. Youngblood?”

  “Logan,” he fairly snarled.

  “Logan,” she returned, striving for briskness while curling her toes into the pine-needled ground.

  With a start, she remembered him taking off her walking half boots last night and massaging her tired feet. A hot blush crept across her cheeks. She must have been exhausted beyond sanity to permit such intimate contact.

  “Stop staring at me as if you want to eat me,” she blustered at him. “If you have something to say, say it.”

  Her words seemed to spark a flash fire in his already smoldering gaze.

  “Lady, you really do need a keeper. Don’t ever tell a man he looks like he wants to eat you.”

  She blinked in surprise. What a peculiar thing to say. She almost found herself reassessing Logan’s level of intelligence. But they’d come too far for that. She knew he wasn’t limited in his reasoning abilities. He was just a darned strange man.

  “All right.” Surely it was best to humor him when he got this way.

  If anything, his frown intensified. “Don’t ask me why.”

  “I hadn’t intended to.”

  He opened his mouth, as if he had something more to say on the subject, then seemed to think better of the matter.

  “Now that I reflect upon the issue, however,” she continued, “I can’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t make such an observation—providing, of course, that I don’t meet up with a cannibal.”

  She thought her attempt at humor might bring a softening to his rigid countenance. It didn’t. She glanced around uneasily. Could it be that there were cannibals in the Idaho Territory?

  He ran a hand through his longish hair. For no reason, her stomach turned over. This time, it was Victoria who frowned. She really needed to gain control of her chaotic senses.

  “We’ll have those peaches this morning,” he advised her sharply. “Then I’ll hitch the team.”

  The change of topic was abrupt but welcome.

  “All right.”

  “We won’t be pushing so hard today. You can walk.”

  That was a relief. There would be no jarring, bruising wagon seat to contend with.

  “About what happened…” His words trailed off, and his glance shot to the tangled pallets beneath the wagon.

  Her gaze followed his. Not trusting anything he might have to say on the subject, she decided to get her piece in first. “It’s all right. There’s no need to dissect what occurred between us. I suspect you were telling the truth about me moving to your side of the bedding. My sister says I have a habit of doing that.”

  Victoria realized she was wringing her hands, and stopped. “It was wrong of me to accuse you of trying to have your way with me. And, if we take into account your prolonged lack of female companionship—” her gaze encountered his stockinged feet and remained there “—we have an adequate explanation.”

  “All nice and tidy,” he agreed.

  She thought she detected a sarcastic edge to his tone. Her head jerked up. It dismayed her that her first and only kiss thus far in life had come from this disreputable example of the male population. Good grief, anyone would have been preferable to this criminal!

  “I don’t think it’s fair for you to hold me entirely responsible for the kiss,” she felt compelled to point out.

  A shuttered expression settled over his rugged features. “What makes you think I do?”

  “You said that I should be the one to keep my distance from you,” she reminded him.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, don’t you see?” she demanded in exasperation. “That makes it appear I’m the one at fault. If you’re going to be fair about this, then you must accept your portion of responsibility for what happened and keep your distance from me.”

  She thought she’d expressed herself very well, and was pleased with her logic. Surely he had to agree with her.

  The contrary man shook his head.

  “There’s a couple of things you’re overlooking.”

  “Such as?”

  “Life isn’t fair.”

  She always hated it when people felt the need to tell her that. Life should be fair!

  “And,” he went on, “the reason I said you should keep away from me is because I’m a man and you’re a woman.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, really, sir, surely you’re not going to drag out that tired bit of reasoning, that I’m to blame solely because I’m a female.”

  He took a step toward her. She held her ground and raised her chin. She was fed up with men, like her father, always falling back on a woman’s supposed weakness to justify blaming them for any and all problems that arose between the sexes.

  “I guess I’m going to have to be blunt.”

  His roughly voiced announcement raised faint tingles of uneasiness. “When have you not been blunt?”

  Something hot and predatory glinted in his eyes. She had the uneasy sensation that her attempt to put him in his place had somehow given him permission to cross an invisible line that might have existed for her own protection.

  His hand dropped to the front of his trousers. “Men have needs.”

  Her gaze innocently followed his action. Her eyes widened in mortification as she watched him adjust the clothing covering his lower person. Blunt? Oh, he was crude beyond redemption.

  “We grow hard and hurting when it’s been a long time without female.comfort. When that happens, and we find ourselves getting too close to a woman, we stop thinking with our heads, and—” He broke off.

  Victoria held her breath. She feared what he might say next, but found herself fascinated by his explanation. In the space of a few minutes, she’d discovered more about life in general and men in particular than she’d learned in all her twenty-four years. It had been an embarrassing education, but she was hopelessly ensnared by her unlikely tutor.

  If anyone knew anything about a man’s baser instincts, surely it was Logan Youngblood.

  “You’re too damned pretty and innocent for your own good.”

  The compliment came as a shock to her.

  He thought she was pretty? She regretted the warmth that flowed through her, but she couldn’t suppress it. As for her naiveté, good grief, if he just continued talking for another five minutes, she would consider herself an expert on male needs.

  “A man will reach out and grab what he wants when it’s within touching distance. A woman has more restraint. That’s why I suggested you keep your distance.”

  “I see.” He really had more confidence in women than she thought was warranted, for she remembered the moment when she’d almost pulled him to her. If that wasn’t grabbing, she didn’t know what was. “Uh, you know, I might be able to help you, Logan.”

  A look of absolute astonishment swept his features. “What?”

  “You needn’t act so surprised,” she grumbled, irritated that he didn’t seem to think she was capable of solving his dilemma. “As you stated, I am a woman, and therefore I am the perfect one to solve your little problem.”

  He took another step toward her. “Little?”

  “As I see it, your main difficulty is that you’ve been deprived of feminine companionship.”

  He raised his hand and ran his fingertips across her cheek. She shivered at the contact.

  “You’re just full of surprises, Victoria.”

  Another compliment…She found herself smiling at this not-so-complex man.

  “It’s really very simple, Logan. All we have to do is reform you. We’ll change your wayward ways, and while we’re at it, we’ll mend your deplorable lack of manners.”

  He dropped his hand as if he’d been burned. “Will you?”

  She nodded, pleased at her inspired suggestion. “It’s the perfect solution,” she continued enthusiastically. “I can teach you how to be.civilized. That way, you’ll be able to find a good, decent woman who won’t reject you
. Then you won’t be lonely any longer. And, once we’ve reformed you, you won’t be locked up in any more abandoned forts.

  “Of course, you will have to marry the object of your affections,” she pointed out, warming up to her subject. “But once you do, you’ll have a constant supply of…I believe you called it ‘female comfort.”

  She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to thank her for her highly generous offer.

  “Hell.”

  Chapter Eight

  Victoria tramped alongside the lumbering wagon and fumed at Logan’s pigheadedness. It must be clear to anyone with a grain of intelligence that he needed all the help he could get. No doubt it was his pride that kept him from accepting her offer of assistance.

  She swatted at the pesky deerfly that circled her head. When she returned from her morning’s call of nature, she’d found Logan trying to wrap his own ribs with a length of sheeting. Even though she was exasperated with him and his rude rejection, she’d swallowed her wounded feelings and volunteered to help with the bindings.

  He’d announced that he was capable of tending to his own needs. Well, the foolish man obviously had no idea how to take care of himself, or he wouldn’t be residing in abandoned prison cells.

  Suspecting it would be a waste of time to point out that his obstinacy was only hurting him, she’d sat on a stump, eating from the tin of peaches he’d opened. Periodically she’d glanced in his direction as he awkwardly secured the strip of cloth around his muscular torso.

  Naturally, she’d been obliged to notice his darkly furred chest. Again. It was a puzzling development, this preoccupation with the man’s magnificent.er, adequately formed chest. It was hard to believe she’d cradled her cheek upon it last night. She frowned, wishing she hadn’t slept through the experience.

  Without warning, Victoria’s toe caught on a narrow protruding root in the trail’s loosely packed soil. Abruptly she and her wayward thoughts went flying across the uneven ground. She came to rest upon her hands and knees, nose to nose with a terrified squirrel clutching a tiny pinecone. Within the blink of an eye, the small creature darted away.