It seemed that he stood there for an eternity, shoulders impossibly broad, stance straight and incredibly still. She might have imagined him there as the fine white muslin curtains whispered around the darkness of his body.
Then he moved. Striding toward her, where she lay.
She found motion herself at last, leaping up, standing defensively by the bed. But it made no difference. He reached out for her, caught her wrist, wrenched her into his arms. His chest was bare, and she felt the fevered heat of it burning through the thin white fabric of her nightdress.
“You’ve no right,” she began brokenly. “You can’t come here like this—”
But he had. And he didn’t speak a word, just captured her face between his two palms, found her lips with his own. Forceful, passionate.
Savage …
His lips parted a breath from hers. “You were just in my room,” he told her huskily. “What did you come for?”
“To say good-bye,” she whispered.
“No.”
“To say good-bye!”
“You’re a liar, Teela. You came for more. Much more. And I promised you, a touch again would be for real.”
“No …”
“What did you come for?”
“To say—”
“What did you come for?”
“I told you—”
“The truth.”
“I came …”
“For me. For this …”
His mouth covered hers again. Forceful, heated, undeniable.
She raised her hands to beat against him. They fell upon his tautly muscled arms, fisted. She tried to strike him again. Her fingers opened upon his flesh instead. She couldn’t breathe. She’d felt the sensation before. Everything within her seeming to tremble, her blood to run swift and hot. His tongue had found entry to her mouth. Liquid and searing. Sweeping her mouth, driving deeply into it, stealing breath and strength. She was kissing him back. Dear God. Maybe not. She wasn’t fighting, she wasn’t protesting, she was afire within his arms, tasting …
She twisted from his onslaught. She opened her mouth to whisper a no once again. But it would have no meaning. She didn’t quite understand his ferocity; she was a little frightened by it. But any denial would be a lie. She didn’t care that he half hated her; she didn’t care that he had come like a windstorm in the night. She knew merely that she was entangled with him in some inexplicable way, and all meaning in life seemed to have come down to this moment.
“I had thought to keep away from my brother’s house,” he told her, his whisper a hoarse caress against her cheek. “But then, you belong within my brother’s house. You belong with soft cotton sheets and down pillows, in the sheltering comfort of a white man’s bed.”
His lips touched her throat. Teased. Moved on. She might have told him that she didn’t need anything, that a bed of earth and grass would be sufficient, when she was held by him. Ah, what she needed was sanity, but it was not forthcoming. What she needed was strength to fight him, the sense to remember that he mocked her, disdained her …
She was suddenly standing free. She heard the violent ripple in the air as he wrenched the covers from the bed. The moonlight fell over them both. The swivel mirror reflected them. She could see herself, the fabric of her nightdress all but sheer, the lines of her body clean beneath it, her breasts all but bare beneath the lace of the bodice, color and shadow all too visible. The gown was white; she was white, pale except for the fiery flare of her hair cascading down her back.
He stood just a foot away as sheets and comforters settled, staring at her, pitch black hair unqueued, falling with a slight wave to the tip of his shoulder, that shoulder a deep copper, bunched with muscle, broad and naked. His feet were bare, his chest was bare. He wore doeskin breeches, nothing more. For a moment it seemed that the differences between them were enhanced by the reflection in the mirror, everything enhanced, the strength and size of him, the delicacy of her own figure and flesh. Then he took a step toward her, blue eyes intense against his handsome features, and she felt a trembling seize her with the strength of a north wind.
Another step, this time his hands upon her shoulders, his heat, his scent, hot and alluring in the shadows of the night.
“Wait!” she gasped.
“You would have me wait?” he demanded imperiously.
“You said—”
“You played, Miss Warren, teased and tormented, and I walked away. Now I’ve walked back. Will you stop me?”
She tried to swallow, tried to turn from the fire in his eyes, tried not to feel the all-consuming fire that swept her. She gasped when she felt his fingers upon the lace of her bodice, felt it tear to his determined touch, sweep softly over her flesh as it drifted to the floor. She realized almost dimly that she was naked, that he had made her so in a matter of seconds. She was up in his arms, weightless, then falling down hard upon the bed, his hard-muscled form atop her, hands catching her wrists, pinning her.
And again he was staring at her.
“I will not have you mock me!” she cried. “I’ll not, I’ll not!”
“It’s myself I mock,” he whispered. “For I will not leave Cimmaron tonight I’ll not leave you tonight. The moth has flown too close to the candle.”
Chapter 6
The night seemed to have a touch of the unreal upon it. From the moment he had seen her come floating into his room like a wayward angel with her fiery hair and snow white gown, he had ceased to think.
A raw, simmering instinct, something that had filtered into his blood, body, and being, had caused him to follow her from one room to the next. Something even more basic had brought him to stand before her, touch her, strip away the virginal white, and bear her down with him to the softness of the bed.
And now he spoke the truth. And he didn’t speak the truth. She had teased, indeed. He shouldn’t have come. He didn’t want to think. He wanted to touch.
And taste.
Fill himself with her. Still the obsession. Free himself from the invisible silken ties she seemed to have cast over him. Know her. Solve her.
Yet he knew already, inside, that by touching he would not be free. He refused to admit that he might be ever more tightly bound.
Moonlight spilled softly into the room. It seemed to carry a strange whisper of fog with it, something that softened and made him want to cry out with each subtle nuance, each twist or shift of her body. His arm stretched with hers above her head, his dark against the moon-bathed whiteness of hers.
She was the silk he had imagined …
The fire of her hair was silk, the brush of her flesh. His left fingers curled around her wrist while his right knuckles rode a gentle trail down her inner arm, the side of her breast. He watched her eyes in the ivory glow, the green darkened as her pupils dilated, her stare steady on him. She swallowed hard, no sound escaped her. He leaned low, finding her lips again, savoring their sweet taste, hungering for more. The length of her flush against him. All silk. Breasts teasing his chest, slim legs entwined with his. His sex rested against her abdomen, touching silk there, too.
He found himself mesmerized by her features. By those eyes, huge, defying fear, shadowed just the same. Her fine, high cheekbones, small, straight nose, delicately cut chin. Radiant waves of her hair framed her face, the color nearly matching that of her lips, slightly parted, damp in the moonlight. The breath seemed to rush in and out of her.
He shifted down against her. Against the whiteness of her flesh, enhanced by the moon glow, her nipples as wildly red as her hair. He nuzzled one with his lips and caught it within his mouth, caressed it with his tongue. She shifted against him, and a choked sound fell from her lips.
He shifted farther. His lips pressed against her abdomen. Lower. He no longer held her wrists; his hands were upon her hips, his head against her belly. Her fingers curled within his hair, tense. The length of her trembled violently. But she didn’t speak. She didn’t seek to stop him in any way.
He leaned
up on an elbow and sought out her eyes. They were closed, dusky lashes brushing her cheeks, face pale, lips still damp and parted, so sensual. His gaze swept her body, savoring every detail. She was elegantly slim, yet generously curved. Her flesh was as perfect as ivory from head to toe. The soft V of hair at the juncture of her thighs was vividly red. He set his palm upon it, brushed his fingers over it, then within it.
Her eyes flew open. He swiftly leaned forward, capturing her lips. His mouth ravaged and consumed as his fingers pressed farther, stroking, exploring. He wanted her so much. Wanted to touch her inside and out. Taste, feel, breathe her in. He’d never known such urgency, such intense hunger, such a need to have everything, all at once. But touching her seemed to exacerbate the anguished heat that had coiled within him since he had first laid eyes upon her. He could feel himself, rigid, swollen against her, and he could wait no longer. He arched his weight and pressed his length between the silken softness of her thighs, caressed the fire red thatch of hair at their apex, and thrust himself into her.
She didn’t cry out; she didn’t let the smallest wimper escape her. He went still himself, wondering vaguely why he had been so certain that she would have known a lover before. He shuddered fiercely, unable to withdraw, unable not to feel the wave of emotions that engulfed him. He was angry, he realized. With her for coming so near him, like that moth to the flame. With himself for having been so desperately captivated.
But the emotions meant little against the strength of the raw need that shrieked within him. He forced himself to lie still, to allow her body to adjust to his. Braced on his hands, he looked down into her face, but her eyes remained closed. She was so pale, so motionless, she might have been dead except for the pulse that leapt at her throat, the fine sheen of perspiration that bathed her, the now rampant rise and fall of her breasts. He opened his mouth to speak, but the right words would not come. He closed his mouth, gritting his teeth. Some hoarse sound of defeat escaped him, and he allowed himself to move more deeply within her.
She seemed to envelop him like a glove, a touch of hot liquid silk once again. He meant to move slowly, to seduce … yet the sensation of her seduced him instead, and a wild surge seized him in the moonlight. He caressed her buttocks, holding her close and firm, thrusting with a driving momentum that soared higher and higher. A last he filled her with the fullness of his body and a cry escaped him. The war was gone, white was gone, red was gone. The world seemed to split with an explosion of light as the violence of his climax ripped from his body and into hers. He held her still, thrusting again, and again …
Then he fell to her side, his heart thundering like wildfire, his flesh drenched with a copper sheen, his breathing just barely slowing. He turned quicky, determined now to see her face. She’d still not whispered a single word.
Nor did she offer her eyes to his. She’d curled away, her back to him now, head lowered, a spray of red hair hiding her features and her emotions.
With his desire sated, he could curse himself once again. What a fool. No. He rose on an elbow again, staring at the sleek curves and perfection of her body, at the rich blanket of hair that tangled around them both in lustrous waves. He would want her again. And again. She had touched something deep within him. She was like a drug a man should not taste, addictive, beguiling.
What the hell was the matter with him? He groaned inwardly. In the midst of the war he had taken an innocent white woman. Michael Warren’s daughter. No good could come of it.
“Teela—”
“Please, don’t,” she murmured determinedly, her back remaining to him.
“Don’t what?”
“Apologize.”
“Apologize!” he exclaimed. He clenched his jaw as he threaded his fingers into the hair at her nape, forcing her to turn his way. “I wasn’t about to apologize,” he assured her flatly, staring into the depths of her eyes. She had never cried out, never even whimpered. Maybe he had intended to apologize. Not now, of course. “I want to know just what the hell you were doing in my room.”
She shook her head, trying to look away, but she could not.
“You are pulling my hair.”
“Then don’t tug against it.”
“You have gotten what you wanted—”
“Oh, have I? Or have you? Was this done to torment your father? Perhaps you want to have him swearing to kill me. Perhaps he’ll just have another damned good reason to say that we’re all heathens and animals and deserve to die!”
“What has Michael Warren to do with this!” she hissed, tugging her hair to free it from his hold. Tears were beginning to show in her eyes. She slammed her fists against him suddenly, determined to force him to free her.
He had no intention of letting her go.
“You tell me,” he insisted, his grip in her hair every bit as strong.
“Do you plan on scalping me by ripping it out strand by strand?” she demanded rigidly.
“If I have to.”
“Let go of me or I will scream.”
“If you think my brother is going to hang me, you’re wrong.”
“All I want is for you to leave me alone!”
“But it’s too late for that, Miss Warren. Far too late.”
“You’re mistaken. It’s easy. Get up and walk out the door.”
He shook his head slowly. “I told you, I am staying the night.”
“You’ve your own room. It’s your brother’s house, remember?”
“But I am comfortable where I am.”
“You are not welcome where you are.”
“Seminoles hear that constantly. We have learned to ignore it. And dig in.” He eased his grip on her hair, but his fingers remained entangled. She lay facing him. If she tried to turn, she would be held back. For the moment he had her where he wanted her. He reached out, touched her cheek lightly with his knuckles.
“Why, then?” he whispered.
“Why what?”
“Why didn’t you fight me, stop me?”
“Why did you come?” she asked, sidestepping his question.
“Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? The savage after the white man’s daughter?”
“You are sarcastic and bitter.”
“Am I?”
“Offensively so.”
“Well, then, excuse me, I will try to remember not to be so offensive the next time I see a village being razed by your people or children on a trail barefoot and in rags.”
“You have slain white women and children.”
“I have never.”
“Your people have.”
There was no denying that. The silence stretched out. “Why?” he repeated to her at last. The word was soft. He was suddenly glad of where he was, she was. Raw hunger sated, the woman beside him still. He was glad of the moonlight as it fell upon her naked flesh, glad to study her. He wanted to hold her again. Just hold her. Breathe in the clean, feminine scent of her hair. Feel the warmth of her. As they lay now, he wasn’t even touching her. But he was stirred afresh by the sight of her generously afforded him now, the fullness of her breasts, the silken smoothness of her flesh, the graceful line of her throat and shoulder, the rise of her hip and length of her legs.
She shook her head, lashes sweeping her cheeks. “I—I don’t know,” she whispered at last. “I wanted …”
“Wanted what?”
“You.”
“An Indian?”
She sighed with exasperation, green eyes suddenly riveting upon his with a blaze of anger.
“I wanted you. That simply, McKenzie. That simply. Put more into it, if you will. Cast the whole cause and effect of the Indian wars upon it. I can tell you no more. Now, if you would be so good—”
“Ah, but I will not be so good, Miss Warren. Not at all.”
“But—” she began, trembling.
“But! The moment of obsession has come and gone, and you have learned it a painful thing and wish to be alone to nurse your wounded body and soul.”
“So
mething like that, perhaps.”
“But I will not leave.”
“You must—”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
He leaned close to her again. Touched her lips with barely a breath. Moved his caress to her throat, pausing where her heartbeat quickened. He straddled her, lifted strands of her hair gently, let them fall back upon the whiteness of her flesh, half covering her breasts. She stared up at him, eyes closing when he set his hands upon her, fingers softly stroking around the sides of her breasts, palms coming light atop them. He bent low to capture one nipple within its tangle of hair. Her hands fell upon his shoulders, fingers raking his shoulders, nails digging. He ignored the pain, caressed and teased, and willed the heat within him to come slowly now.
His body rubbed against her as he came down upon it. His fingers stroked, his lips followed each touch. His kiss moved in a liquid trail over her stomach and hip, along her outer thigh. Her inner thigh. She tensed, writhed, but could not stop him, for his movement had left her limbs parted, his body between them. The moonlight was almost magic—he was able to see, to savor, touch, tease, torment.
Seduce.
That was important. He’d offer no apology, his pride was too great, their searing connection too strange. But he meant one. Meant to offer something for the swift, staggering pain she had so stoically endured. Meant to have it forgotten by the red-gold streaks of dawn.
“Please …”
She whispered the word. Once, again. Her head tossed, red hair floating in the ivory moonlight, spraying out in its endless curls upon the white pillow. Her fingers dug into his hair now and tugged hard.
He’d wind up scalped himself …
Ah, but it would be well worth it.
She did not open her eyes. He paused briefly, watching her before his last sweet, sensual assault. She seemed so cool, yet felt like fire. The trembling in her limbs was hot. He lowered his head against her. Nuzzled the nest of red curls. Parted her with a stroke of his thumbs. Caressed her with his tongue.
White-hot fire cascaded into him with the wild bolt of her body, the twist of it, the soft cry she barely captured as it gasped from her lips. She tried to ease up the bed; he caught her hands, entwined his fingers with hers. She writhed. He allowed no mercy. Fervent, whispered pleas fell upon deaf ears. She would never bow or bend with words, never give in to his demands. She would answer what she chose to answer, meet him defiantly in this as with all things. Yet he would have a certain surrender, even if seeking that surrender now seemed to stir and torment him beyond endurance, tie him in corded knots, awaken the gnawing hunger again as if it had never been appeased. Ah, but he would wait. Taste and tease and savor while exquisite torture ravaged him in turn. Touch, caress. Sweet torment…