Matt let her pull him down against her soft warmth, savoring the feel of her arms, her love surrounding him.
“Do you mind about the big wedding Mama’s got her heart set on?” she asked.
He let his gaze roam over her face, soft and golden in the dim lamp light. “I would stand beside you before the whole world,” he said. “I’ll be proud to marry you again.”
He tasted the sweetness of her lips. “I’m sorry about Pace,” he told her softly.
She gave him a sad smile. “Me, too.”
“He’ll come around soon, you’ll see.”
“I know.” She kissed his chin. “What’s the real reason you didn’t tell me Dad had changed his mind about us?”
Matt stiffened, then let out a sigh. “They say confession’s good for the soul. I did try to tell you, last night on the trail. You, uh…”
“Distracted you?”
“Boy, did you ever.”
“Are you going to answer my question?”
Matt sighed and leaned over her so he could look into her eyes. “Pure selfishness. I wanted to know—needed to know—you loved me enough to fight for me, to stand up to Dad and Pace, to stop hiding what we felt for each other.”
“Oh, Matt.” She pulled him down and kissed him. “I’m sorry it took me so long. I wasted so much time. Time we could have spent together.”
“Like this?” he asked with a kiss to her neck.
She arched for him, giving him better access. “Yes,” she whispered. “Like this.”
He nibbled on her neck and sent hot tingles shooting to her toes. His hand rested boldly on her bare stomach. Right over her womb.
“Matt?”
He kissed and nipped his way toward her breast. “Hush. I’m busy.”
She grinned. She’d never known having her own words turned back on her could be so thrilling. “Busy doing what?”
“If you can’t tell,” he said between nibbles, “then I’m in big trouble.”
Just as he reached for her nipple, Serena grasped his face in her hands. Once he kissed her there she wouldn’t be able to talk, or think. “There’s something…something we’ve never talked about.”
He turned his face to kiss her palm. The hot stroke of his tongue made her shiver.
“Is it important?” he asked, gold flecks heating his dark eyes.
“I was just wondering…” He was kissing his way down the inside of her arm. She lost her train of thought.
“I was just kissing,” he said.
Yes. “So I noticed.” He was just kissing. Just stealing her breath. Just driving her crazy with wanting him.
What had she been…oh, yes. “I just wondered how you and Joanna would feel about—” His lips left her arm and landed on her stomach.
He moved over her and nudged her thighs apart. After settling himself there, he resumed the trail of fire down her belly.
“About?” he asked.
She could hear the smile in his voice. “You’re teasing me.”
“I’m trying. But you keep interrupting me.”
“I was wondering how you and Joanna would feel about…a baby brother or sister.”
Matt’s heart gave a giant thud. Slowly, he raised his head and searched her eyes. “Are you—”
“It’s too soon to know.”
He swallowed. “But you could be.” He placed his hand gently on her stomach, not the least surprised to find himself trembling. A baby. The thought of watching Serena grow big and heavy with his child took his breath away. “You could be carrying my child right now.”
“How would you feel about that?”
He met her gaze. “Proud. Humbled. Honored.”
Her eyes glistened with gathering tears. Her lips trembled on a tender smile that stopped his heart and brought a lump to his throat. “I love you,” he told her, the words coming from deep in his soul.
“And I love you.”
Need rose up in him. The need to feel her trembling lips against his. The need to drink her up, swallow her whole. To give her his life.
They shared a long, searching kiss that soon grew heated and fierce. But Matt wanted to slow down. They were married now, man and wife. Instead of hard bare ground, they had a soft bed beneath them. He wanted to take his time, to drive her crazy the way she had him the night before. He wanted to feel her writhe beneath him.
He tore his mouth from hers and buried his face between her breasts.
His sudden silence left Serena anxious. “So a brother or sister would be all right?” she asked.
Instead of answering, he laved his tongue across her nipple. Serena sucked in a sharp breath. Fire shot to her abdomen and lower.
“Actually,” he said, his lips and teeth toying with her. “I’ve got more brothers and sisters than I know what to do with already.”
“Matt.”
He kissed his way down one breast and up the other. The tug of his mouth there brought on a throbbing deep and low. “Now Joanna,” he said. “I’m sure she’d love a brother or sister all her own.”
Serena arched beneath him, feeling her breasts swell. “That’s…good. Matt, hurry.”
“There’s no hurry. We’ve got all night. We’ve got a lifetime.” He kissed his way back up her neck.
Serena grinned. He was going to pay her back for last night. That was fine with her. She tried to relax and let him take his time, but his lips, his hands built a fierce urgency in her that made her breath come in sharp little pants.
“You know what the Apaches believe about making babies, don’t you?” she asked.
He grinned against her throat. “That they’re made one part at a time?”
“Don’t you think…we ought to make sure ours…has all his parts?”
Matt made his way slowly to her ear. “What did you have in mind?”
God, his mouth was burning her, devouring her, making her lose her mind. “Well,” she managed between gasps. “There hasn’t been much time for us to make too many parts. I thought…” God, he was at her breast again.
“You thought?”
“I thought maybe…maybe we should get to work on the rest of him.”
“Yeah,” Matt said, feeling his control slipping. “I agree.” Still, he took his time. She was ready, he knew. But he wanted her more than ready. He wanted her desperate. As desperate as he was.
“You…agree?”
“Oh, yes,” he whispered against her nipple. “He’s going to need all those other parts.”
“Then shouldn’t we…get…started?”
“We should. We have to make sure he’s got every muscle, every single bone, every hair on his head. Wouldn’t want a bald baby, now, would we?”
“No,” she said with a gasp as he stroked the curls between her legs. “Shouldn’t we…shouldn’t you…”
He teased her silken folds with fingers that trembled with eagerness. “Get started?”
“Yes,” she cried.
She arched beneath his touch, driving him wild with heat and want and need. His game had backfired. Now he was the one who was desperate. He positioned his hard, aching flesh. “Yes.”
“When?” she cried.
“Just as soon,” he whispered against her lips, “as you stop talking.”
She didn’t say another word. Not a coherent one. Not until much, much later.
When Matt could think again, could breathe, he let out a satisfied sigh and gently kissed the spot on Rena’s temple where the white streak began.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“And I love you.” Matt gazed into her eyes while he kissed her lips. “I don’t think I ever told you how glad I am you came to Tombstone.”
She smiled. “That must be hindsight speaking. You were definitely not pleased at the time.”
“You scared the hell out of me. You made me feel things I told myself were wrong. You tempted me, drove me crazy.”
“You held out fairly well for a long time.”
Matt smiled softly. “Not long. I nee
ded you. I still do. I always will.”
Serena pressed her lips to his. Her heart swelled to near bursting. “I’ll always be here for you. Always. I’ll never hide my love for you from anyone again. We can touch and kiss whenever we want, right out in the open, and not care who’s watching.”
The warm, loving glow in Matt’s eyes pulled the rest of the words she wanted to say straight from her heart.
“I’ll be beside you to hear Joanna’s prayers. I’ll lie next to you every night in your bed. I’ll wrap my arms around you in the dark, and you can lay your head on my breast and know I’ll always be here for you, the way I know you’ll be here for me. I will take you so deep inside me…”
“Rena…”
“And every morning when you wake, I will spread my hair—”
Matt stole the rest of her pledge with his kiss. “Just love me, Rena, that’s all I ask.”
“I do. I will. Forever.”
THE END
Author’s Note
Geronimo’s escape from the reservation in 1881, as witnessed by the Coltons, was not his first breakout, nor his last. During the next four years, he returned, then left, several times.
General George Crook is quoted as saying the Indian trouble in Arizona was due to “greed and avarice on the part of the whites.” A radical statement for a U. S. military officer of his time, and one that left him unpopular, to say the least.
Although he was never captured, despite having 10,000 troops from two countries chasing him and his handful of followers during his last years of freedom, Geronimo surrendered for the last time in 1886. The Chiricahua scouts, without whom the army would have had little or no effect in convincing Geronimo to surrender, were betrayed by the army and sent to Bowie, Arizona, with the renegades.
At Bowie, they were put on a train bound for prison in Florida. As they boarded, the irony of the band playing “Auld Lang Syne” was surely lost on the Chiricahua.
It was not lost, however, on one witness. Jessica Colton watched in stunned horror as her brother, Pace, beaten and in chains, was loaded onto the train with Geronimo, headed for a swampy Florida prison. Determined to follow and free her brother, Jessie doesn’t realize army officer Blake Renard has been ordered to see that she…
Ah, but that’s another story. In a few months, we’ll share another cup of coffee, you and I, over another campfire late at night, and I’ll tell you the story of Jessica and Blake, the story of a legacy of deceit and betrayal, a legacy of truth and courage and pride. An APACHE LEGACY.
Yours,
Janis Reams Hudson
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008
New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 1994 by Janis Reams Hudson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For more information, email [email protected]
First Diversion Books edition October 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62681-459-2
Dedicated to
Tom Bodette and Motel 6
for leaving the light on for me back in 1993
(at your former Midwest City, OK, location
on the north side of the I-35 Tinker Diagonal)
so I could finish this book when home got too hectic.
And to
Eileen Dreyer
for the tips on how it’s done.
Thanks, girlfriend.
Land of Legacy
Fear begets distrust and hatred.
Deceit and betrayal bring forth cruel vengeance.
But the land knows little of man’s petty games.
It forgives, forgets, ignores.
It leaves a lasting heritage to those who treasure it.
A legacy of pride and honor, of courage and grit.
A legacy of strength.
An Apache Legacy.
Prologue
June 8, 1872
New Mexico Territory
The first time he came face to face with Geronimo, Blake Renard came away bloody. The only surprise in the outcome was that he had been alive to come away at all.
Blake’s horse had come up lame. He and his cousin, Wade Sinclair, were riding double on their way home from town when they crested a low hill and spotted a half dozen riders rushing straight toward them.
“Holy Mary.” Wade crossed himself. “Apaches!”
Blake peered over Wade’s shoulder and felt the spit dry in his mouth. There were six of the half-naked, blood-thirsty devils. “Get us out of here,” Blake hissed.
Wade yanked on the reins, spun the horse around, and dug in his spurs. The horse leaped forward and bucked. Blake lost his hold and went flying. He hit the ground hard and tumbled down the hill. Sky and ground switched places so many times he lost count. Rocks. Cactus. Torn flesh. Blood. Pain. Dirt filled his nose, his mouth, his eyes. Sickness churned in his gut.
He slammed to a halt against a tumble of rocks at the base of the hill. He lay there for a stunned moment before he realized he’d stopped rolling. Bruised and battered, he coughed and choked, spitting dust from his mouth, and forced his knees beneath him. It was the best he could do just then. Bracing himself on all fours, he hung his head and gasped for air.
No point looking around. Blake knew which side of the hill he’d rolled down. He knew Wade was long gone and wouldn’t be back. Wade Sinclair wouldn’t risk a hair on his head for his own mother, much less for a cousin he hated.
Blake knew what he’d see when he raised his head.
Panic swelled in his throat and threatened to choke him. His arms and legs quivered like he had the palsy. He was unarmed, afoot, with bloodthirsty savages ready to gut him. He was as good as dead. No two ways about it.
With that thought, an icy calmness settled over him. All right, so he was going to die. Everybody died. The best he could do now would be to die like a man. He pushed himself to his feet and straightened. Shoulders back, head up, he turned slowly toward the six restless horses, the six eager riders.
Dark bronze faces leered at him, some grinning, some glaring. Apaches. Gut-eaters. Devils.
They had him. They knew it, yet they just sat there. Why didn’t they move? Why didn’t they hurry up and get it over with?
“What are you waiting for?” he yelled.
One Apache nudged his mustang forward until he was so close Blake had to arch his neck to see the man. The Apache’s deep, broad chest gleamed with sweat. His eyes…there was something about his eyes.
Then Blake knew. He’d never seen the Apache before, but he knew who he was. This was the one, the one who had murdered Blake’s mother. The one who had turned Blake’s father into a drunk. The one who’d caused Blake to be tossed aside unwanted, to be raised by an aunt and uncle who already had a family of their own. This was the bastard who had cost Blake his family, his birthright. The bastard Blake had vowed to one day kill.
His heart thundered like a herd of runaway horses while his hands and knees shook. “Geronimo,” he whispered.
The bronze warrior raised a brow. “Sí, that is what I am called.” Geronimo cocked his head as if trying to solve an amusing puzzle. “¿Quién es?”
Blake went blind with fury. “Who am I?” With a snarl, he leaped forward and grabbed for the knife sticking out of Geronimo’s moccasin. “I’m the one who’s going to kill you, you son of a bitch.”
Before Blake could get the long-bladed knife free of the moccasin, Geronimo had him by the neck. With one hand, the Apache lifted Blake to eye level.
The fleeting thought raced through Blake’s mind th
at this couldn’t be real. No man was strong enough to lift him one-handed that way. It was impossible.
Yet, incredibly, his feet dangled in mid air.
With his free hand Geronimo grabbed for the knife. Blake held on. The two struggled. With both their hands wrapped tightly around the bone handle, the knife came free of its sheath. In a test of wills and strength—damn, but Blake knew he wasn’t strong enough—the two fought for the knife.
The hand around Blake’s neck squeezed tighter, cutting off his air. He squirmed to get free while keeping hold of the knife. His throat closed. His lungs burned. Something tugged on the blade. Geronimo grunted. A thin slice opened and bled along the Apache’s bare thigh.
Then the knife twisted, and Blake felt fire lick his cheek. Something hot and wet gushed down his face. Dark spots danced before his eyes. His lungs struggled futilely for air.
Suddenly the hand at his throat loosened, and he was free! Free! Then the ground slammed into his back.
Everything went black.
But not for long. When he came to, dust still lingered in the air. Unbelievably, Geronimo and the other Apaches were gone. Blake was alone and, miraculously, alive.
He tried to get up. Pain slammed into him from all sides. His back, his lungs, his head. The worst of it settled and throbbed like a blue bitch in his left cheek. He raised his hand to feel his face, only to find Geronimo’s knife still clutched in his fist. His fingers wouldn’t turn loose of the bone handle.
With his other hand, he felt his cheek. Merely touching it sent pain shooting clear to his toes. His vision blurred. His fingers came away bloody.
It took him several long, agonizing minutes to get to his feet. A small cloud of dust was disappearing over the southern horizon. Blake raised the knife in the air. “I’ll give you this damn thing back one day, Geronimo,” he shouted. “Clear up to the hilt, you murdering bastard!”
His face screaming with pain, blood trailing down the front of his shirt, Blake Renard staggered toward home.
Yes, one day he would give Geronimo back this knife. But it would be an afterthought, because the next time they met, Blake vowed he’d be packing a gun. If only they didn’t meet during the next two years, that is. Uncle Phillip had told him he wouldn’t be allowed to carry a six-shooter until he was at least twelve, and in this summer of 1872, Blake Renard was only ten years old.
Apache-Colton Series Page 109