Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Still, it was rude in the extreme to hide here at the water’s edge and refuse to see him off. He had done so much for her, at no small expense to himself.

  As the sun crested the eastern ridge, LaRisa squared her shoulders. She could do it. She’d surely done harder things in her life than say good-bye to a…friend.

  She turned toward the path to retrace her steps, but halted instantly.

  Once again, Broken Hand blocked her way. This time there had been no rustling of underbrush to warn of his presence. He had come silently. Stealthily.

  “You do not leave with the white man.” He didn’t asked, but stated.

  LaRisa ground her jaws. She was sorely tired of this man. “What I do or do not do is none of your business. If you and I are going to live in the same camp, we are going to have to learn to either be civil to one another, or to leave each other alone. I will not tolerate your following me around like this, or threatening me the way you did yesterday.”

  “You do not tolerate?” he asked, incredulous. “A woman does not tell a man what to do. You have many lessons to learn.”

  “That may be, but I will not learn them from you.”

  It was a repeat of the day before. She tried to step around him. He caught her by the arm. But this time he began dragging her into the trees.

  “Bíni’!” she cried. “Stop! Let go of me!” She tried to pull her arm from his grasp, but he merely tightened his hold and grinned. The coldness of his smile sent a shiver of dread down her spine. Frantically, wishing desperately for Pace’s knife she had left in her carpetbag when she’d changed clothes, she tried to pry his fingers loose. When that didn’t work, she leaned down and bit his hand.

  Broken Hand yelled, but didn’t let go. He swung with his free hand and backhanded her across the cheek.

  LaRisa would have fallen beneath his blow, but he held her up by her arm.

  From behind him came a low snarl.

  Suddenly LaRisa was free, and Broken Hand was jerked backward away from her. It was a instant before she realized Spence had literally lifted Broken Hand by the back of his neck. Spence swung him around head first, directly into the trunk of a sycamore.

  The sound of the impact echoed through the woods.

  Spence let go, and Broken Hand slid down the tree to lie unconscious at its base.

  LaRisa stared, shocked that everything had happened so fast.

  Spence turned on her with fire in his eyes. “Goddammit, can’t you stay out of trouble for a single day? I thought I told you to stay away from the bastard.”

  LaRisa stiffened. He had never spoken to her this way before. She didn’t like it, not one little bit. “He followed me. I was trying to stay away from you.”

  “He won’t get the chance to follow you again, by God.” He grabbed her hand and started hauling her up the path toward camp. “You’re coming with me.”

  “You don’t have to pull my arm off. I was on my way to tell you good-bye.”

  “Save your breath. You won’t be telling me good-bye today. You’re coming with me.”

  Stunned, she tried to stop and was nearly yanked off her feet. “You mean…to Arizona?”

  “Every step of the way.”

  “I will not!”

  “I’m not asking. I’m telling.”

  “Well, you can just tell it to the wind, white man. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  Spence stopped so fast she nearly ran into him. He whirled to face her, his chest heaving, his fingers squeezing tight on hers. “Oh, yes, you are,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “You are going to walk back to camp, saddle your horse, and ride down off this mountain with me. You either do it under your own steam, or so help me, I’ll carry you kicking and screaming every step of the way and tie you to the goddamn saddle.”

  Eyes wide, LaRisa backed away as far as his hold allowed. His eyes were wild, his grip firm. “You can’t mean it. You wouldn’t—”

  “In a heartbeat, honey.”

  This was not the Spence she knew. Not the concerned doctor, the loving brother, the respected rancher. This was a stranger. A hard-eyed, grim-faced man with the heat of battle in his eyes.

  “Why?” she cried. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Do you want the first killing to ever take place in this rancheria to be over you?”

  LaRisa shook. “You wouldn’t kill anyone. You’re a doctor!”

  “Was a doctor. If I don’t kill that bastard back there, there’s a nice young man in camp who looks at you with calf eyes who might just try it himself. Is that what you want? Men killing each other over you?”

  Fury singed her veins. How dare he blame her for this! Yet she could not honestly say that what he warned of wouldn’t happen. But it’s not my fault!

  “What’ll it be?” he demanded, his jaw flexing. “You walkin’, or am I carrying you?”

  Stiff with rage, yet knowing he would do as he threatened, LaRisa turned toward the camp. “I hate you for this.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  They took the north trail down from the mountain stronghold. It was a few inches wider than the southern route that had brought them up, so they were able to ride, rather than walk their mounts down.

  It was a silent trip, yet not a calm one. When Spence and LaRisa needed all their concentration for the dangerously steep and winding trail, each was lost in a separate world of anger and confusion.

  Spence was angry with himself that he’d let Niño talk him into going after LaRisa. The young jackass had known Spence wouldn’t be able to leave without her. When Spence had gotten LaRisa back to camp, Niño had LaRisa’s mare saddled and ready. His mother had packed LaRisa’s carpetbag, and it had been tied to the back of the mare’s saddle. Dee-O-Det, the old goat, had looked at Spence and smirked.

  Dammit, he felt manipulated, yet he couldn’t quite be sorry that he’d dragged LaRisa out of the stronghold. God help him, he wanted to be.

  At a more or less level spot along the narrow ledge, he drew his horse to a halt and looked back at LaRisa. “You doing all right?”

  She glared at him and refused to answer.

  LaRisa couldn’t speak past the ball of rage in her throat. Tight-lipped, she stared past him until he turned and moved down the trail. Without urging, her mare followed.

  How dare he drag her away from her only chance at a life of her own. How dare she let him. How dare she hope…

  She squelched the thought. There was no hope, not for her. She would now be expected to live off the generosity of his family and pray every day for that stupid law to be changed.

  Mixed with her anger was also confusion. When she had changed into her divided riding skirt and swung into the saddle, Dee-O-Det had stood beside her and covered her hands with his. His dark, ageless eyes had pierced hers so deeply she felt certain he was looking straight into her soul.

  “Listen to your heart, my child. The song it sings will be sweeter than the melody of the whippoorwill or the meadowlark, more stirring than the call of the coyote. And like the wind in the pines, it will sing forever.”

  LaRisa had been stunned. How had he known? She had never told him of her father’s words, that she should seek freedom so her heart would sing. How had he known? And what had he meant when he warned that her song was not of freedom, but of something even more important?

  What could be more important than freedom?

  The trail widened and wound down among the foothills. Without the thousand-foot drop-off merely inches away, the horses moved easier. The safer trail was still not wide enough for two to ride side-by-side—not that LaRisa would have ridden beside the damn white man—but it was wide enough to allow her to breathe easier.

  Spence led them to a cool spring nestled in a stretch of mesquite and madrona. They dismounted and allowed their horses a brief rest while they silently ate the corncakes Nod-ah-Sti had placed in their saddlebags.

  After angling down a nearly dry arroyo leading away from the mountains, they cr
ossed a broad grass valley and wound around a pine-capped mesa. The land was vastly different from what LaRisa had seen when they’d come to Mexico, but it was still as big as the sky, and as untouched by man as anything she could imagine.

  Spence concentrated on the trail, determined to keep his mind off the woman behind him. She had not said a single word since just before they had returned to the camp that morning, when she’d told him she hated him.

  Early that afternoon they skirted a stretch of lava for an hour or more, then picked up an old trail leading north across the Cananea Hills. From there, the territory was familiar to Spence. If they stuck to the trail, they would reach Naco Springs and the border patrol before dark.

  He led them off the trail. No way in hell did he want to explain to the Mexican or American border guards just what he’d been doing in Mexico, and why the woman with him looked suspiciously like an Apache.

  Just east of the manzanita ridge that led down to the Springs, he cut around, through a marshy strip of land that bypassed the patrol. He pushed on until the sun was down and shadows deepened. It was almost full dark when he led the way down into a deep wash that would have been dry but for a pool of water trapped in the rocks halfway between the head and the mouth.

  Setting up camp was easier without the pack animals to tend to, but the lack of work was replaced by an angry tension that hadn’t abated during the day-long ride. Spence started a small fire, then without looking, reached into the bag of supplies for the coffee. He ran into LaRisa’s hand. He pushed it out of the way and grabbed the coffee pot. “I’ll do it,” he bit out. “You never make enough.”

  “Well, excuse me, Mr. Perfect. In fact, excuse me for living. If you don’t want me along, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. You’re the one who dragged me away from Pa-Gotzin-Kay.”

  “I know what I did.”

  “Well if you know so much, why don’t you tell me what I’m supposed to do now? Live off your family’s charity the rest of my life?”

  Spence slapped the coffee pot down at the edge of the fire and rose to face her. “I don’t know, all right? We’ll figure something out.”

  “Figure what out? My choices are two,” she shouted. “Live with your family, if they want me, or stay married to you. Which we both know is out of the question.”

  “You’re damn right it is.”

  “Of all the insulting…you make it sound like I want to stay shackled to you the rest of my life, when I’d rather eat dirt. I was wrong about having only two choices. I have a third, and that’s the one I choose. If you won’t lend me the money to go, I’ll get it somewhere else. You just get me to the nearest train depot and I’ll be out of your hair for good.”

  He loomed over her until their noses almost touched. “Where in Hades do you think you’re going on a damn train?”

  “Alabama.”

  “The hell you are.”

  “The hell I’m not.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “Don’t tempt me, white man.”

  “You’re not going to Alabama or anywhere else.”

  “Why not?”

  Why not? She wanted to know why not? If he told her, there would be no going back. Yet how could he go back anyway, when he couldn’t keep her out of his mind?

  He had set his life on a particular course, and she kept knocking him off track. She didn’t do it on purpose—hell, she probably didn’t even know what she was doing to him. It was his reactions to her that were the problem.

  He didn’t want to feel, and she made him feel so damn many things. Anger and frustration, certainly. But even worse was the hope…the wonder, the…possibilities. She made the heat of life pump hot and heavy through his veins. Made him feel it. Made him want more.

  And goddammit, it hurt to feel. It hurt to want.

  Warnings shouted in his mind. Warnings to back off, right now, before their argument got any further out of hand. This woman could rile him quicker and more thoroughly than he’d ever been riled in his life.

  But other instincts, older, more primitive, were at work inside him. Instincts that had nothing to do with common sense or self-preservation or the vows he’d made to himself about how he would live his life. “Why not?” he repeated harshly.

  He felt like a powder keg, and she was the match. The more basic, stronger instincts exploded inside him, blasting away his control. “Because of this,” he ground out.

  Suddenly he was grasping her shoulders and yanking her against his chest. When his mouth took hers, there was no gentleness, no tentative tasting or nudging of lip on lip. There was only heat and hunger, and a need like he’d never known that threatened to cripple him if it wasn’t satisfied. A need for her.

  Her lips opened beneath his and he drank in her essence, her sweet, sweet taste, then drank even more.

  It wasn’t enough. Would never be enough. She tasted too perfect, felt too right pressed up against him.

  He dragged his hands down from her shoulders to her breasts. He felt them, cupped them, heard her moan.

  God, this was madness. This would ruin everything for both of them. He had to stop.

  He tore his mouth free, then buried it against the side of her neck, just below her ear. “Push me away,” he ordered hoarsely. “Slap me. Hit me. Make me stop before it’s too late, LaRisa.”

  She heard the rough panic in his voice, tasted his hunger on her lips. Felt the need in his hands upon her breasts. She felt them too, the panic, the hunger, the need. She wrapped her arms around his waist. “It’s already too late.”

  “No!” He stepped back and broke her hold, pulled his hands from her breasts. “No.”

  He looked much the same as he had that morning—hard-eyed, grim-faced. He was still doing battle, but this time, with himself. She realized then, recognized what she should have seen earlier. Yes, sometimes he was a concerned doctor, sometimes a loving brother and respected rancher. But there was only one word to describe the man before her now, alive and on fire with the heat of battle. His eyes burned into hers, letting her see his dark, reckless soul. His cheekbones stood out. His nostrils flared like a wild beast catching the scent of prey on the wind.

  She might be his prey, but he wasn’t a beast. She must have been blind not to have seen the truth sooner.

  Blue-eyed and golden-haired though he be, the man before her had shed the trappings of civilization. He was wild. He was uncontrollable. He was…a warrior.

  A warrior.

  The warrior?

  Her warrior?

  How was she to know?

  She took a deep breath and let instinct guide her. With a boldness that would have made her ancestors proud—at least the female ones—she stared him down. “If you stop now, white man, so help me, you won’t need to worry about bandits waiting in ambush again, because I’ll kill you myself.” She reached for him.

  He backed away. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Then show me.”

  Ah, God, how was he supposed to turn away from her? He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He would take what she offered, what he wanted so damn bad. God help him. “God help us both.” He kissed her again. This time it was a demand—for total surrender.

  LaRisa surrendered everything.

  Spence shook with the need to deny himself what she so generously offered. He felt like he was standing back on that three-foot-wide ledge again, with a thousand-foot drop only an inch away. One more kiss, and he would go over. There was no future in it, not for him, not for her. He didn’t have a future. Not one he could share with a woman.

  But God, he wanted her. The wanting was clawing through him with talons sharpened by weeks of practice, months and years of denial. It was shredding his resistance into so many little pieces, they were no longer recognizable. He swung LaRisa up in his arms and carried her down to his bedroll.

  She wound herself around him until he felt weak, but a
t the same time, stronger, more powerful, more of a man than he ever remembered feeling. Than he had ever hoped to feel. A shudder of pure emotion ripped through him.

  LaRisa felt it and held him tighter, trying to take him into herself. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t imagine what. He was still fighting himself, and he was hurting. She knew he thought they shouldn’t be together this way. He was wrong. That knowledge was new to her, but it was as solid as his chest against her breasts. This was exactly the way they should be—together.

  She couldn’t say the words, so she tried to show him how she felt by grasping his head and dragging his mouth to hers.

  Spence reeled under her tender assault. The temptation was strong to rip her clothes away and plunge into her again and again until he lost himself completely in her heat.

  But as she cradled his hips between her thighs, he was reminded of how vulnerable a woman was to a man’s lust. LaRisa was both vulnerable and innocent. He didn’t want her first time with a man to be over before it began. He wanted her to know the driving pleasure that rode him, wanted her to burn for him the way he burned for her.

  From somewhere came the strength of body and will that allowed him to slow down. He would make love to her, even knowing he shouldn’t, but he would not take her like a crazed animal.

  Yet he would take her. Had to take her. He would just have to make sure she went with him over the edge. For that, he needed control of himself.

  Holding her face gently in both hands, he kissed his way along her jaw, down to the silky spot behind her ear. His fingers touched the braid wrapped around her head.

  Suddenly he knew he had to free her hair, had to run his hands through it, bury his face in it. He searched for the pins holding the braid in place, but his fine, surgeon’s fingers failed him in their trembling eagerness.

  “Your hair,” he moaned. “I want…”

  LaRisa placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed. “Let me.”

  Spence rose and pulled her up until she sat between his spread knees. The look in her eyes was sultry. She raised both arms and plucked one pin after another. The long braid fell down her back. She pulled it over her shoulder and he watched, mesmerized, as her nimble fingers slipped in and out of the plaint, unbraiding it. She was graceful. Seductive. And he was dying of anticipation.