Before that blade could fall.
James cried out again, a cry of warning and of fury, then pitted himself against Otter, catching the warrior’s muscled arm, the one that held the knife, and wrenched it back with all his strength, causing Otter to spin. Enraged, Otter wrenched free, raising his knife again with deadly intent against James. He leapt at Otter, bearing him down to the ground beneath him. His fingers wound around Otter’s wrist. He slammed Otter’s arm and hand against the earth until the knife fell free from his fingers. Otter stared at him with a deadly hatred. “You’d kill me for the white woman, for Warren’s daughter? Your brains, your pride, lie in your cock, traitor!”
James sat up swiftly, hurtling the knife away. The world around them had come back to life. Braves again gathered rings from the fingers of the fallen, food from their haversacks. “I’m not killing you, Otter. And you’ll not interfere with the white woman again.”
Otter continued to stare up at him. James had no choice but to leap to his feet, disdaining Otter. And go for Teela.
Sweet Jesu! She had risen from the cypress and run and was now halfway across the copse, racing back along the trail. He shouted to her, then realized he did so in the Hitichi he had spoken with Otter. It didn’t matter. He would terrify her now as much as any other warrior here—yet it was imperative that he get her away from here as quickly as possible, before his own position could be forgotten by Otter’s warriors, before they both went down in a rain of carnage.
She deserved to be terrified. His fury at her rose along with his fear that they might not make it out alive.
The running speed he had never fully appreciated became his greatest asset that day. He all but flew after her, winding his fingers into the skeins of vibrant red hair that flared behind her, the hair she had so nearly lost to Otter’s lust for vengeance against Warren. She shrieked, still trying to fight, flailing, kicking, pummeling. He dragged her down to the earth, desperate to make her not just see him but obey him.
Swearing beneath his breath, he straddled her, catching her wild-flying fists, pinning her wrists above her head with one hand. She continued to twist and writhe with a savage energy that threatened to defy his strength. He swept the tangle of hair from her face, staring down at her. She was gasping for breath to scream again, yet the scream did not come to her lips.
She stared at him, closed her eyes, lay still and trembling.
“Look at me,” he ordered curtly.
She did. Her eyes flew open, filled with ice and hatred. It had been a long time since they had met face to face. A lifetime in this hell that was the world between them.
“So you are a part of a war party now,” she stated coolly. “Kill me, then, and have done with it! Slaughter me, slice me to ribbons, as your people have done with these men.”
“It was a fair fight!” he countered angrily. Was it? He didn’t know, he hadn’t been there. There was no fair fight left to be had here. She knew that. She knew what the battle was here, knew that women and children died on both sides.
She had merely never been under attack before herself. Feeling death’s whisper against her cheek.
“It was an ambush!” she spat at him.
He felt a coldness in his heart. She had been living in her world. Living among the soldiers. Attending dances, sipping champagne. Well, she belonged in her world, he told himself with all the contempt he could muster. But he meant still to force the truth of everything that went on here down her throat. “The captain leading this party ordered the direct annihilation of two entire tribes, Miss Warren, men, women, and children. Babes still within their mothers’ wombs. Yet you say these soldiers should have been shown mercy?”
“I know that there is none within you! There is no mercy to be found in this wretched hell, I am well aware, so do whatever you will! End it!”
He leaned closer to her, longing to shake her, make her see, make her realize …
What? He wasn’t a murderer. Yet he was a part of these people now stripping fallen bodies. He gritted his teeth, arching a taunting brow to her. “End it? But we do so enjoy torturing a good victim!” And how had she become such a victim? She should have been at Cimarron, safe. She should have listened to him.
“What were you doing with these men?” he demanded. His words were incredibly harsh, he knew. They had to be. She wasn’t answering him. Shaking inwardly and praying not to show her any of his own fear, he shouted the question again, “What were you doing with these men?”
“Leaving!”
His heart slammed like a rock against his chest. “For where?” he demanded.
“Charleston.”
Charleston! Charleston! Damn her, now she was running home, when running was deadly! He’d told her to go home before, but she’d defied him, stayed. Seeped into his very blood, obsessed him, until …
He leapt to his feet, reaching down for her. She was already trying to rise, trying to run from him again. Incredulously, he reached for her, slamming her with a savage force against his body, determined to let her realize they still faced danger.
“Fool! You will not be going anywhere now!”
“You’re the one who has always told me to leave!” she reminded him fiercely. “You’d have thrown me off your precious land were it possible. You told me to go—”
“And you didn’t listen.”
“I was trying—”
“Apparently, you didn’t listen in time,” he snapped. “Leave my side now and you are dead, Miss Warren, don’t you see that?”
A scream suddenly split the air. A scream that came from a white man not quite dead as a piece of scalp was sliced cleanly from his head.
Teela trembled in his arms even as her eyes continued to defy him. Her eyes glittered with a fresh fever. Tears. She was trying so hard not to shed them.
James called out in his own Muskogee, not looking around, keeping his eyes on Teela. “Warren’s daughter is my captive; I am taking her now!” He caught her firmly by the upper arm, aware that he didn’t dare loosen his grasp for an instant, yet aware that she could too easily see the tragedy strewn on the ground around them. “Don’t look down and don’t look back!” he ordered sharply.
Thankfully, he had managed to keep the bay, a gelding raised at Cimarron, well enough fed that the horse was a good and decent mount, able to carry them both swiftly from the scene of the carnage.
Still, he offered his horse little mercy, forcing it at reckless speeds over the trails, across marsh, through the bush. He wanted to put as much distance between them and the massacre as quickly as possible.
He didn’t speak to her, didn’t slow his gait, until they had traveled to his shelter within the hammock. There he dismounted, setting her quickly down before him.
She stared at him, very stiff and straight. Regal. The perfect white southern lady. Without blinking, she turned coolly from him, walking to the water.
He was grateful that she was alive.
He was furious that she had been nearly killed. Furious that he still shook with fear, furious that he had nearly been too late.
“So you were leaving,” he drawled contemptuously. “Going back to graceful drawing rooms, charming company, and the elegance appropriate to such a well-bred young lady.”
“I wasn’t trying to go back to anything,” she replied, perfectly composed.
He wasn’t going to have it. She had nearly died. She was a fool, and she needed to be shaken until she realized what a dangerous little fool she was.
“You were just trying to leave this barbaric wilderness?” he taunted.
She spun around, staring at him. He wished that her eyes weren’t so brilliant, her skin so silken white, her hair such a tantalizing shade of pure fire. “I was trying to leave the wretched battles and the horror and the—death! Your friend meant to slit my throat!”
Yes! Otter would have gladly killed her. A knife seemed to be slicing into him. “I’d have killed him very slowly had he done so.”
“How
reassuring! I could have cheered on your efforts from heaven.”
“Or hell!” he said, eyes narrowing. Then his fury seemed to erupt within him. “Why did you leave my brother’s house?”
“I had no choice.”
“Jarrett would never have cast you out.”
“I had no choice!”
Defiant. Still defiant. Stubborn and fighting to the end. He could best white enemies, red enemies. He could not best her.
Again his fury erupted within him. He strode to her. She tried to back away, but there was nowhere for her to run. He set his hands upon her, not knowing what he meant to do, wanting to shake her. Fire seemed to rip and tear throughout him. Heated iron, bolting, bending, twisting. He clutched her hand, dragged it against his bare chest. Words spewed venomously from his lips. “You left Cimarron, 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 with such vigor he couldn’t stop her.
“I’m not afraid of you!” she cried out. “I’m not afraid of you, you—”
“You should have been afraid! You should have been afraid a long time ago. You should have run back to your civilized Charleston drawing room the second you set foot in this territory. Damn you, you should have gone away then!”
“Go to hell!”
“I think I shall get there soon enough,” he snapped back quickly, his temper soaring again. He didn’t know quite what he was doing, but he was suddenly touching her again. Touching her. The anger was hunger, gnawing at his soul, eating away at his loins. His fury was passion. He didn’t know what it was about her, what so obsessed him. He knew that he had watched her through the windows of her life long enough. His torment would come to an end for this night.
He set his hands upon her shoulders, backing her along the riverbank until she was forced against an old, gnarled cypress. His whisper was as hot against her as the tempest raged within him. “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? Didn’t you hear? Or didn’t it matter? Was it tantalizing to play with an Indian boy? Touch, and back away, before you get burned?”
“Anyone who touches you is burned!” she spat at him. “Burned by your hatred, your passion, your bitterness. Anyone is burned—”
He could bear no more. His fingers dug bitingly into her shoulders, a promise there would be no escape from him now. “Then, my love,” he warned her, “feel the fire!”
And it was a blaze, wretched, demanding, ruthless, that filled him. With any sanity he’d never be so rough. But sanity was lost. The rapacious hunger in his blood seized hold. He touched her, and fabric split and tore. He ground his lips down upon her mouth, tasting, questing, searching, demanding. Her hands were against his chest. He fought the violence within himself. She writhed and kicked, slammed her fists against him. He didn’t care, couldn’t care. He swept her up and cast her down upon the soft, damp earth, carpeted there by a bed of pines. He hated her. Hated himself. Hungered all the more.
He straddled her, caught her wrists. And she ceased to struggle. She stared at him, eyes liquid and glittering with fury.
He eased his hold from her wrists.
Her hands did not move against him again.
The tempest, the passion, stayed with him. Yet his fury suddenly seemed lost on the gentle breeze that swept around them. Her hair was a pool of fire against the green earth. Her flesh was absurdly beautiful against the rich and verdant ground. Theirs was a hell neither had created; it was an inferno that ignited the instant they had first set eyes on each other. There was no explaining it, and no denying it.
“What in God’s name am I going to do with you?” he whispered.
And he touched her. Touched the rise of her breast, the hardened nipple, the fullness of the mound.
He nearly cried aloud. Desire shot through him like rifle fire. The sweetness of touching her was almost unbearable. His lips found hers again, and there was no protest to be found there….
“Bastard!” she whispered.
Yes. Indeed.
“Perhaps. But tell me to leave you be. Say it with your eloquent words, and mean it with your soul!”
“Bastard!”
“I know, I know,” he agreed, shuddering with the feel of her, the wanting.
He threaded his fingers through her hair, found her lips. Found more of her, inhaling the scent of her, breathing her in, tasting her. His lips traveled everywhere, teased, hungered, teased, tasted. Ruthlessness filled him again, but ruthlessness tempered now by tenderness, by the desire to evoke within her a hunger to match his own. Her soft cries increased the desperation of his urgency and desire. There was no intimacy he would spare her, needing more and more of her. Nothing would deter him. Nothing but …
She cried out suddenly, fighting him again. Yet fighting him because of the sensations exploding within her, sensations she longed to deny. Ruthless again, he took that moment to thrust deeply within her, sinking into a field of ecstasy with the simple act, shuddering before feeling the maelstrom seize hold of him. She’d been in his dreams too long. Haunting his sleep, taunting his days. Now she was his, encompassed in his arms. She touched him. Held him. Moved with him. He felt as explosive as a cannon, charged with a desperate, urgent desire, so glad to hold her, wanting to caress her forever, so damned on fire that he could not hold back the bursting climax rocketing from him. Into her. Again, again, until he was empty and she was filled.
He lay back, half ecstatic, half ashamed.
She stirred beside him, ripping her hair from beneath him. She tried to gather the pieces of her dress together—impossible. She cast them aside, rose naked like a goddess, and walked to the water. He rose restlessly and followed her. Stooped down to gather the water up in her hands, she would not look his way. “Feel the fire!” she whispered softly. “I am well burned!”
Shame constricted within him, along with the haunting jealousy he had not been able to help but feel when he had watched her within the fort. “You should have known better than to play with an Indian boy from the very beginning.”
She stared at him. “I never played,” she said with dignity, and rose again. She walked away from him, staring down at her destroyed clothing. “It will be a cold night.”
A damned cold night, he thought. He stood, walking back to her. “I will warm you through it. In the morning we’ll worry about something for you to wear.” He’d be damned if he’d let her hear any kind of apology in his voice.
“I don’t intend to stay the night,” she informed him in her most regal tone.
The hell she wasn’t staying. And the hell with her tone.
“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.”
She stood there stubbornly. With an impatient burst of violence, he swept her up from where she stood. He carried her to his small shelter in the woods, setting her down without much gentleness, silently damning her all the while. She wouldn’t leave when he had told her to do so. When she might have done so safely. She had played her game. And now that game was so well and deeply engaged, she was going to have to see it through.
She shivered, and he set one of the fur blankets around her. He realized that he had taken her from the road, from near death, and all but raped her. Staring into her eyes, wanting her, hating her, refusing to believe that he loved her, he offered her a drink of water from a leather gourd. She accepted it in silence, drinking, then told him, “You’ll never keep me if I choose to take my chances and leave. I came from a drawing room, but I’ve learned your jungle well.”
Wh
at had he done to deserve her amidst this jungle of red and white, right and wrong? If she tried too hard to get away from her only salvation within the deadly terrain, he might as well kill her himself and get it over with!
“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,” he commented. He could feel anger growing within him again.
“Nor are you any more a Seminole that you are a white man! 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 mans’ 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.”
Was he angry that she was not Indian? Could not be part of his world? He wondered if it was so.
“Life is making you cruel—”
His temper exploded. “Enough, Teela. Enough for tonight!” he warned her.
Surely, she saw that he was frayed and weary. She gritted her teeth hard, her eyes glittered with fury. But she said nothing more. She turned her back on him and lay down in silence.
He stared at her back. At the soft white flesh rising above the fur. At the tangle of red hair streaming around her.
Leave her! Walk away! he commanded himself.
Tonight, he might as well will the moon to fall from the heavens.
He lay down beside her and took her firmly into his arms.
He couldn’t have her, couldn’t have her …
All the more reason to hold her, possess her, while he could. Feel her nakedness against him. Cherish it.