“And you didn’t listen.”
“I was trying—”
“Apparently, you didn’t listen in time,” he snapped, and she became very aware again that she was flush against the heat and force of his body. “Leave my side now and you are dead, Miss Warren, don’t you see that?”
A dizzying sensation overcame her. Dead men lay around her, and she didn’t dare look at them. She didn’t want to recognize them. She was afraid that she would pass out. Tears suddenly sprang to her eyes as she thought of the men. She had hated some of them. But others…
He had a strange perception. Or perhaps he had lost a few white friends here tonight as well. She wondered at the emotional tugs he must feel in his own heart. His only blood brother was white. His nephew was white, his father had been white. And he had tried very hard to stay out of the fighting, but events had made that impossible.
She heard the anguished cry of a man. Her face must have gone very pale, and her enemy must have had some shred of mercy, though he would deny it. He shouted out a command in his Muskogee language, then started dragging her away by the upper arm. “Don’t look down and don’t look back!” he ordered brusquely.
She tried not to. Tried very hard not to see the carnage. A Seminole brave, a feathered band around his head, his chest bare and painted blue, a breech clout all that covered him, lay in death over an army corporal. They all but embraced. A terrible cold seemed to seep into her. Her teeth chattered. In a moment she would burst into tears. Never, never in front of this man.
He had a horse, a beautiful animal. A bay mare, with her ribs showing only slightly. Teela found herself thrown up on the animal, and he swiftly mounted behind her. In a few minutes’ time, they had left the scene of the ambush behind. She didn’t know where they were going. His people were so much on the run now that such a thing as a village scarcely existed, except very deep and hidden in the swamp. The women could be far more vicious than the men when they chose, so she prayed that he wasn’t taking her to where many of her own gender awaited. Seminole punishment included scratchings with needles, often doled out by the women. Or she could endure ear and nose clippings and other maimings …
She felt ill as they rode and rode, the sights and sounds and memories of the savage assault all weighing down upon her. Had any of the men lived? Did they lie in torment? Did they have a chance of survival?
James was silent, anxious only to ride hard, so it seemed. Lush foliage was thrashed around them. Darkness had fallen, and she couldn’t have begun to tell in the pine-carpeted green darkness in which direction they traveled.
At first she thought that he had merely brought her to a river to drink. Then she saw that a hootie, or shelter, had been thrown up hastily in the copse near the water. Cabbage palms created the roof, and warm blankets carpeted the floor space.
He had come here alone, she thought, and she was grateful. Even when he roughly set her upon the ground, she was grateful. She didn’t want to face any other members of his tribe. She didn’t want to face him. How strange. She had lived long days and nights in fear, longing for just the sight of him.
As Michael Warren’s stepdaughter, she had always been in danger of much more than a swift and certain death.
Set upon the ground, she stiffened her spine. She walked to the water, fighting a new wave of hysteria and a flood of tears.
“So you were leaving Florida,” he said suddenly from behind her. “Going back to graceful drawing rooms, fine company, and the elegance belonging to the life of such a well-bred young lady.”
She gritted her teeth, stiffening her spine still further.
“I wasn’t trying to go back to anything.”
“You were just trying to leave—this wretched wilderness?”
She spun around. Her lips trembled, her eyes were liquid and wild. “I was trying to leave the wretched battles and the horror and the—death!” she whispered. She gained some control. “Your friend meant to slit my throat.”
His arms were crossed over his naked chest. Ink black hair streamed over his shoulders, a single band with no adornment wound around his forehead. “I’d have killed him very slowly had he done so,” he said in a low, smooth voice.
“How reassuring,” she murmured. “I could have cheered on your efforts from heaven.”
“Or hell,” he commented dryly. Then he asked furiously, “Why did you leave my brother’s house?”
“I had no choice.”
“Jarrett would never have cast you out.”
“I had no choice,” she repeated stubbornly. Perhaps he understood.
Perhaps he never would.
He strode to her then, and she longed to back away. But there was nowhere to go except the river. And she wasn’t prepared. He was moving with his fluid grace and a startling swiftness. He was on her before she could have gone anywhere at all, even if she had determined to cast her fate into the water.
His hands were on her arms, and she was against him again, against all the fire and vibrance and fierce, furious life of the man. And before she could struggle, he had her hand palm down upon his naked chest. “You left Cimarron,” he said huskily, “but not for home then, when you could have sailed right out of Tampa Bay. You forged across the territory! What then? Did sense come to you at last? Did you run from the war?” he demanded harshly. “Or did you run from this? Bronze flesh, copper flesh, red flesh?”
She wrenched her hand away from him with all her strength. Dear God, but she was so emotionally entangled, and his passions and his hatred for her were all that seemed to rule him. “I’m not afraid of you!” she cried out furiously, fingers knotting into fists at her sides. “I’m not afraid of you, you—”
“You should have been afraid,” he told her. “You should have been afraid a long time ago. You should have run back to the chaste gentility of your civilized Charleston drawing room the second you set foot in this territory. Damn you, you should have gone away then!”
“Go to hell!” she cried to him.
“I think I shall get there soon enough,” he assured her.
She’d scarcely been aware that he’d moved, but he was close in front of her once more. His hands were on her shoulders once again. He was still moving, backing her along the riverbank, until she was forced against an old, gnarled cypress, and as he spoke, the hot whisper of his words came from lips just inches away from her own. “Weren’t you sufficiently warned that there was a war on here? Didn’t you hear that we pillaged, robbed, raped, ravished, and murdered? That red men ran free in a savage land?” His voice didn’t rise. The depth and emotion within it deepened. “Didn’t you hear? Or didn’t it matter? Was it tantalizing to play with an Indian boy? Touch, and back away, before you got burned?”
“Anyone who touches you is burned!” she cried out. “Burned by your hatred, your passion, your bitterness. Anyone is burned—” She broke off with a gasp, for he suddenly jerked her shoulders and jerked them hard. The fierce blue of his eyes sizzled into her heart and mind. And the words he spoke then were but a whisper, vehement in their warning—or promise.
“Then, my love, feel the fire!”
His hands then were upon her bodice. She fell back against the tree as she heard the rending of fabric, and felt the fire indeed, the sweeping liquid inferno of his lips upon hers, ravaging, demanding. Her lips were parted by the force. His tongue filled her mouth. She wanted to hate him, rake his eyes out. She wanted to scream and shout and cry and never surrender, for he never would, he would die before he accepted any terms of surrender. And she tried. Tried to twist from his onslaught, tried so very hard not to feel the fire that ignited within her, scalding the blood that surged throughout her like a river, seizing sweet, mercurial hold of her limbs and being. She fought like a tigress, in fact, bringing her arms up between them, pelting him with her fists. But she found herself plucked up and slammed hard to the ground, where her fall was barely cushioned by layers of pine and moss, and where the rich, verdant scents of the earth arose
to encompass her with new sensation.
He straddled her, caught her wrists. And she ceased to struggle, but stared with hot fury into his eyes, her fight and accusation now eloquently silent. And her hands were suddenly free, yet still she didn’t move.
“What in God’s name am I going to do with you?” he demanded very softly, and she lay still as she felt the stroke of his fingers upon her throat, the caress of his hand pushing away torn fabric to close over her breast, the palm rotating over the hardened peak of her nipple.
She knew. She knew exactly what he was going to do with her. Knew that his lips would be tender now when they touched hers, coercing them to part, demanding still, but so seductive. Indeed, she felt the fire. It burned her heart and mind, seared her flesh, ignited her soul. His lips descended upon hers once again.
“Bastard!” she charged breathlessly.
“Perhaps. But tell me to leave you be. Say it with your eloquent words, and mean it with your soul!”
The earth could cave in, and she would not want him to leave her now.
“Bastard!” she repeated softly.
“I know, I know,” he moaned, his lips finding hers once again, his fingers threading into her hair. Once again the sheer force and hunger of his kiss seduced her. Then she felt his lips upon her throat, his hands upon her torn clothing. His mouth closed over her breast, his tongue played over and savored the nipple, and once again a scalding seized her, liquid fire coursing from that intimate spot he touched, filling her limbs and core. She cried out incoherent words, her fingers tearing into the ebony length of his hair. His hands and mouth continued a wild ravishment upon her. She heard again the rent of fabric as he sought her in his haste.
She felt again the fever of his lips, his hands. Upon her belly, the smooth flesh of her hips, the length of her thighs. She felt the searing wet heat of his tongue laving her belly, touching her inner thighs, his fingers, touching, finding, his tongue again …
She cried out in the wilderness and fought him anew. Fought the passion, and the hunger, and all the raw, explosive things he awoke within her. It was a battle lost, for the fire she had touched was one that burned indeed, a conflagration that was caught by the wild winds of the wilderness and sent flying to the heavens. Sweet waves of ecstasy burst into the soaring golds and crimsons of that fire, and she shrieked out in the night, closing her eyes, opening them again only to find that his blue gaze was now pinning her to the moss-strewn ground, and that he had leaned to one side to loosen his breeches. Before she could speak or stir, he was with her, enveloping her in his arms when she gasped and shuddered, her body accepting the swift, knifing invasion of his. He seemed to fill her, and fill her anew. Sink into her until she thought that she would scream and split and die, then withdraw, and fill her again, and with each touch, bring her closer to that magic once again. Yet the swift seduction of his first thrusts gave way quickly to something much more reckless, ruthless even. Savage.
A hunger so deep, it swept her away once again. Brought the earth against her back, the breath ripping from her body. Slick, rippled bronze muscle slammed against her breasts; rock-hard hips commanded the rhythm of her own. The fire of his sex burned within her, steel, hot, touching her, filling her, burning within her …
Exploding within her …
A liquid fire. Encompassing her body, seeming to seep throughout it, touching all of her with all of him. She trembled as ripple after ripple brought her back down to the bed of moss, down into the moonlit darkness, once again into the slick, powerful arms of the man who held her.
His weight moved from her. An arm cast over his forehead, he stared up at the stars now covering the night sky. After a moment Teela pulled the tangle of her hair from beneath him and tried to gather the remnants of her clothing. She felt him watching her. Her bodice lay in pieces; nothing was salvagable. She ignored his piercing blue gaze and stood naked, walking to the water’s edge. She knelt down and bathed her face in the coolness of the river. She felt him by her side, and looked ahead. “Feel the fire!” she whispered softly, bitterly.
“You should have known better than to play with an Indian boy from the very beginning,” he said, his voice husky.
She stared at him hard. “I never played,” she said with dignity, and rose again. Looking around the ground at the ruined fabric, she murmured, “It will be a cold night.”
He stood, walking back to her. “I will warm you through it. In the morning we’ll worry about something for you to wear.”
She lifted her chin. “I don’t intend to stay the night.”
“You wanted to play the game. It is well under way. You didn’t run to your drawing room soon enough. Now, Miss Warren, you will be my guest.”
“Prisoner, so it seems.”
“Whatever. You will stay.”
He plucked her up from the ground, his eyes upon her as he walked to the shelter he had created in the woods. One easily made, easily destroyed, as his few belongings were easily carried through the wilderness he knew so well. His land, a savage land. And land he had vowed he would keep. There would be no surrender; his people would be the undefeated, the unconquered.
Now he set her down upon the furs within the shelter, giving her one to cover her shoulders as she shivered. He offered her water from a leather gourd, and she drank, then returned it.
“You’ll never keep me if I choose to take my chances and leave,” she promised him. “I came from a drawing room, but I’ve learned your jungle of cypress and palms.”
He arched a brow. “A challenge? Then let me assure you, if it is my choice, you’ll never escape me.”
“Damn you—”
“Teela, would you escape me to meet another brave anxious for the beauty of your hair—ripped away along with your scalp?”
“I’d escape you to find freedom from this travesty. Not all Seminoles are barbarians—”
“What a kind observation, Miss Warren!”
“Nor are you any more a Seminole than you are a white man yourself! Don’t tell me about the bronze of your flesh—even your mother carries white blood in her veins. Indeed, you are actually more white than Indian—”
“Teela, one drop of Indian blood suddenly turns the color of a man’s flesh, and you are worldly enough to know that it is so. Look at my face, and you know that I am Indian.”
“I look at your face and know that you are a creation of two worlds!”
“Then know this—life has made me Indian in my heart, and you must not forget it.”
“Life is making you cruel—”
“Enough, Teela. Enough for tonight.”
She gritted her teeth and swallowed hard and lay down upon the furs and skins. A moment later, she felt him beside her, felt his arms come around her and pull her close. His nakedness sheltered her. The smoothness of the wall of his chest created warmth against her back.
Enough …
Enough for tonight. She had started the day assuming she would be on a ship, bound for a new life, or the old life, a life she had once known very well. One she had once left behind easily enough, but which could now shelter her from the pain that had come to exist within her heart.
Then she had nearly lost her life, and now …
She closed her eyes tightly. So she had played with an Indian boy!
No, she hadn’t played. She had fallen in love. She was the white girl. Yet he was the one with the past, with a hatred for all that she represented, with the bitterness for a love now long lost.
And nothing more than a fiery passion for her, one he could not deny, yet loathed within himself.
But he held her now, held her through the night. He had saved her life. She knew it, no matter that she threatened to leave him. She knew that she could not wander through the swamp and hope to explain to a band of Seminoles in a chance meeting that she had never wished them any harm. She was alive now because James had either happened upon the army party taking her northward, or because he had come—for her. Either way it didn’
t matter.
He was her enemy still.
His choice.
Dear God, what would the future hold, what could the future hold?
Yet as she wondered that, she felt a stinging threat of tears press against her closed lids. To ponder the future, she had to remember the past.
And the first day she had come here, to this savage land.
And to the first night she had seen him, in all his glory, the strikingly handsome, civilized man in his elegant suit with his impeccable manners, yet the savage danger beneath the smooth veneer all the while.
The first night … when he had touched her.
And she had first felt the fire.
It had not been so very long ago.
Chapter 1
The Marjorie Anne cut cleanly through turquoise waters on one of the most beautiful days Teela Warren could remember seeing in all her life. Gentle white puffs of clouds appeared like dream creatures in a sky a glorious shade of powder blue. The sea breezes were easy, soft, so gentle beneath the benign heavens. They felt delicious, cool, and promising against her cheeks as she stood near the ship’s bow, her heart beginning a slow thunder against her chest.
They were nearly there. Tampa, the rough, tough city grown up around the military post at Fort Brooke. Gateway to a savage wilderness.
Well, she would take the wilderness, if only she could.
Sometimes, on the ship, the sweet promise of adventure had been strong. The weather had not always been so sweet; storms had come, and an angry sea had tossed and buffeted the ship. And she had loved it all, standing at the bow as she did now, feeling the wind. There was something about it that promised freedom, something that let her forget …
It had helped that her apelike guardian-escorts were not good sailors. Trenton Wharton was a good six feet two inches tall, and well over two hundred pounds; Buddy MacDonald was a bit taller and even heavier. Either one of them could easily pick up a half dozen grown men at the same time—and certainly stop a wayward young woman right in her tracks—but neither seemed to have a decent sea stomach whatsoever.