No Other Love (No Other #3)

Prologue

He came riding out of the golden haze of the late afternoon, a horseman silhouetted against the blinding brightness of the setting sun.

He rode tall, one with the horse, and it seemed that he rode out from the center of the sun itself, defying the death of the day, and the death that lay on the field before him.

For as night came, the fiery orb of the sun sank ever deeper into the horizon, and the rays streaking outward from it bathed the earth and sky in bloodred crimson.

Sabrina heard the deafening pop of bullets, the whistling of arrows, and still she stood transfixed.

Was he one of the enemy, immune to rifle fire, arrows, death itself?

Would he be the one to take her scalp as a trophy for his lance?

“Down!” shouted Sergeant Lally. “Mrs. Trelawny, down!”

Danger was far closer than she had realized, for another group of the Indians, four or five warriors, came riding close before them, their horses’ hooves kicking up dust and dirt as they reined in.

An arrow sailed over Sabrina’s head, landing in the tree just behind her. She sucked in her breath, falling to the ground and lying flat against the earth.

Praying.

“Sergeant Lally! What’s happening?” she cried.

Sergeant Lally did not reply. Sabrina carefully raised herself, then stood, looking over the small, rolling hill of earth and rock where Sergeant Lally had brought her to safety when the fur traders with whom she had ridden had become embroiled in a skirmish with Indians.

Sergeant Lally, her retired army escort, lay facedown, an arrow protruding from his back.

Sabrina stared at him, fighting the scream of panic that rose in her throat.

She rushed to him, falling to her knees by his side, gently lifting his face.

She cried out, for his unseeing hazel eyes stared heavenward in death.

She closed his eyes, yet even as she held the gentle man who had been her friend, an eerie feeling swept up her spine, and she knew she was being watched.

She looked up from the fallen man. A Sioux warrior, his naked chest decorated with vivid blue and white war paint, sat bareback atop an Appaloosa horse, staring at her.

She thought at first that he must be the rider who had seemed to emerge from the flames of the setting sun, but beyond him, that rider was still coming.

This brave had led the attack against her and her party.

He was surrounded by three friends on horseback, but it seemed that he had been the leader of the battle.

And the spoils of victory were to be his.

Sabrina returned his stare. She tried not to think about the traders who had been her escort—friends at one time with the Sioux!—who were lying dead now.

The Indian lifted his bow in his left hand and let out a high, chilling cry of victory, then threw his leg over his horse’s haunches to jump to the earth with a barely audible thump of his feet upon the soft ground of the plain.

He stood very still, smiling as he surveyed Sabrina. He raised his bow into the air again, shaking it, letting out his terrible war cry. She felt his eyes, ink-dark, ripping into her with deadly menace.

She could not, would not, tremble before him, she determined.

She couldn’t die. There was death all around her, she realized, but she couldn’t die. Not now, when life had become so very precious.

Once upon a not-too-distant time, she’d had everything. But she hadn’t known it, and she had lost what she’d had.

She had lost the baby that had brought them together, and she had lost Sloan, and perhaps her own soul.

Now she had the chance to get it all back.

She couldn’t die. Not now.

Life. Always so very ironic.

She had never imagined that she might die out here.

She’d found herself in dangerous predicaments before, but she didn’t think that she’d ever faced death so certainly before.

Now, too late, she realized what a fool she’d been to come here.

The other women at the fort admired her for being strong and resilient; she knew now, far too late, that she wasn’t strong at all, just foolish.

But she’d had to come. She had come to find Sloan.

Most ironically, to save Sloan.

And now she might die herself. And he’d never know that they’d had a chance again, that he might have had a son—that this time, their child might have lived.

The brave approached her, but she stood her ground. She had learned something about the Sioux during her time in the West.

And as Sloan’s wife—for a very large part of Sloan was Sioux.

As was the child who had taken root within her.

If the brave intended to kill her, he would do so whether she stood strong or begged for mercy. He would probably enjoy killing her more if she were to scream and cry and tremble.

Yet he meant to play. Cat and mouse. He came to her, slamming a palm suddenly against her chest, causing her to stagger backward several feet as she desperately gasped for breath.

The brave smiled, pleased with himself. He came at her again.

She backed away instinctively, but this time, his hands shot out and he grabbed her by the upper arms, picking her up to slam her down to the ground.

Again, the breath was knocked from her. She turned her head and stared into the lifeless eyes of one of the young Sioux who had died in the skirmish.

He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, she thought.

And tears suddenly sprang into her eyes.

If she were to live to have her child, would the babe have its father’s mahogany-dark eyes?

Eyes that seemed to see into the soul at times; eyes that could be distant and hard.

Eyes that were always steady and unblinking, set in a handsome bronzed face with fine high cheekbones and a decidedly strong jaw.

What of this child might have been her, and what might have been Sloan?

She jerked her gaze from the dead boy, staring upward at the Indian who was about to straddle her. With a speed born of panic, she leaped to her feet, slamming his throat with her elbow when he started after her again.

He choked. Angry words erupted from him.

And he drew a knife from a sheath at his hip, smiling, placing it between his teeth, stretching out both arms, the better to render her helpless.

“Go to hell!” Sabrina cried to him, clenching her fingers into fists at her sides. He couldn’t understand her, she thought. Oh, God! She wanted to live! Maybe she should let him see her fear, cry out, throw herself to his knees.

“Wait!” Sabrina tried, stretching out a hand, palm upward. “Wait; I need—”

No good. He moved swiftly, taking her by the arms, attempting to throw her down again.

She struggled fiercely, clawing, hitting, kicking, using her nails, knees, the dirt, rocks, clumps of earth, anything she could clutch and throw or use as a hammer.

She was suddenly released; she heard the brave uttering fierce, furious words and she realized she had caught him savagely in the groin with a knee.

He held his knife in his left hand and came at her with the other open-palmed.

He slapped her with a force that sent her reeling to her knees, tears stinging her eyes. Slowly, she looked up at him.

He didn’t smile. He held the knife steady as he walked toward her.

The earth seemed to be pounding. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the rider again. He was nearly upon them. He rode bareback. He was shirtless, but unpainted.

The brave paid no heed to the newcomer. He kept coming at Sabrina. She cast out her arms in self-defense, ready to ward him away.

But he never came for her. The rider had reached them at last. He reined in his horse in such a swift fashion that dust and dirt flew up all around him.

Then he pitted himself at the brave accosting Sabrina, taking the man down upon the ground in a deadly wrestling lock.

Stunned, Sabrina scrambled to her feet. She coughed and choked, unable to see what was going on. The brave’s horse remained just feet away from her. Blindly, she hurried toward it, ready to leap up on it. She was confident that she could ride as well as any man—white or red.

“Sabrina!”

She heard her name shouted and froze, unable to believe she had heard his voice. She swung around. The dirt was beginning to settle, and now the rider walked out of the bloodred mist of dust and dirt and stood before her.

He was Sioux.

Coal-dark eyes assessed her. Sweat-slicked muscles in his arms, chest, and shoulders rippled and glistened a deep bronze in the crimson streaks of dying sunlight. Ink-black, straight hair fell collar-length against the strong lines of his face.

He was White as well.

His features were very cleanly cut, in a classical European manner. And though his chest was bare, he wore dusty cavalry-issue breeches and high black cavalry boots.

Sloan.

“Oh, my God!” she breathed. “Sloan!”

She hurled herself at him, throwing her arms around him, trembling. “Sloan—”

He firmly drew her from him, holding her at arm’s length. He arched a brow, studying her dusty face. “The situation is almost worth the greeting,” he murmured dryly, then asked quickly, “Are you hurt?”

“No, Sloan, but all these men—”

“Are but a fraction of those who will die,” he murmured softly.

“Sloan—” she began, then broke off.

They weren’t alone. The brave who had attacked her was still alive. As were his friends. All watching them.

Sabrina saw the brave Sloan had wrestled from her, rising. Coming up behind Sloan.

The brave’s friends were moving in around them as well. Strategically.

“Sloan!” Sabrina gasped in warning, for the brave behind him was almost upon him. And there were three more. Even if she had a weapon and known how to use it, they would still have been outnumbered two to four.

Sloan, she. realized, carried no weapons. Not even the knife that was usually sheathed at his calf.

“I’ll—I’ll get the horse!” she cried.